Chapter 4: More Practice with Pointers & Arrays

How is the expression: *start++ read or parsed?

*(start++)

NOT: (*start)++

Given the following:

int x[3] = {5,10,15};
int *p = x;

Evaluate *p++

Answer: 10

p points to x[0]

p++ is parsed first, so we get x[1]

*p gets the value at x[1] = 10

Given the following:

int x[3] = {5,10,15};
int *p = x;

Evaluate *++p

Answer: 10

*(++p)

p points to x[0]

++p points to x[1]

*(++p) gets the value at x[1] = 10

Given the following:

int x[3] = {5,10,15};
int *p = x;

Evaluate (*p)++

Answer: 6

p points to x[0]

(*p) gets the value at x[0] = 5

(*p)++ increments the value at x[0] = 6

Given the following:

int x[3] = {5,10,15};
int *p = x;

After all 3 operations, what does p point to and what are the array values?

*p++

*(++p)

(*p)++

Answer: At the end of all operations, p points to x[2], and the array looks like {5, 10, 16}

*p++

p points to x[0]

p++ moves the pointer over to x[1]

*p++ gets the value at x[1] = 10

*(++p)

++p moves the pointer over to x[2] (assuming this happens after the previous step)

*(++p) gets the value at x[2] = 15

(*p)++

gets the value at x[2] = 15, increments x[2] to 16