Pointer Arithmetics

You previously learned what is a pointer and how to manipulate pointers. In this tutorial you will be learning the arithmetic operations on pointers. There are multiple arithmetic operations that can be applied on C pointers: ++, --, -, +

Incrementing a Pointer with (++)

Just like any variable the ++ operation increases the value of that variable. In our case here the variable is a pointer hence when we increase its value we are increasing the address in the memory that pointer points to. Let's combine this operation with an array in our example:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int intarray[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};

    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        printf("intarray[%d] has value %d - and address @ %x\n", i, intarray[i], &intarray[i]);

    int *intpointer = &intarray[3]; //point to the 4th element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 4th element

    intpointer++; //now increase the pointer's address so it points to the 5th elemnt in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 5th element

    return 0;
}

Decreasing a Pointer with (--)

Just like in our previous example we increased the pointer's pointed-to address by one using the ++ operator, we can decrease the address pointed-to by one using the decrement operator (--).

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int intarray[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};

    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        printf("intarray[%d] has value %d - and address @ %x\n", i, intarray[i], &intarray[i]);

    int *intpointer = &intarray[4]; //point to the 5th element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 5th element

    intpointer--; //now decrease the point's address so it points to the 4th element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 4th element

    return 0;
}

Adding Pointers with (+)

We previously increased a pointer's pointed-to address by one. We can also increase it by an integer value such:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int intarray[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};

    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        printf("intarray[%d] has value: %d - and address @ %x\n", i, intarray[i], &intarray[i]);

    int *intpointer = &intarray[1]; //point to the 2nd element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 2nd element

    intpointer += 2; //now shift by two the point's address so it points to the 4th element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the addres of the 4th element

    return 0;
}

Note how in the output the address shifted by 8 steps in the memory. You might be wondering why? The answer is simple: Because our pointer is an int-pointer and the size of an int variable is 4 bytes the memory is shift-able by 4 blocks. In our code we shifted by 2 (added +2) to the initial address so that makes them 2 x 4 byte = 8.

Subtracting Pointers with (-)

Similarly we can subtract:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int intarray[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};

    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        printf("intarray[%d] has value: %d - and address @ %x\n", i, intarray[i], &intarray[i]);

    int *intpointer = &intarray[4]; //point to the 5th element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 5th element

    intpointer -= 2; //now shift by two the point's address so it points to the 3rd element in the array
    printf("address: %x - has value %d\n", intpointer, *intpointer); //print the address of the 3rd element

    return 0;
}

again the address is shifted by blocks of 4bytes (in case of int).

Other Operations

There are more operations such as comparison >, <, ==. The idea is very similar of comparing variables, but in this case we are comparing memory address.

Exercise

Copy last three addresses of intarray into parray which is an array of pointers to an int.