STRUCTURES AND POINTERS

STRUCTURES AND POINTERS

ü  In C, the pointer is a variable that holds the address of another data variable.

ü  A pointer to structure means a pointer variable can hold the address of a structure.

ü  The address of structure variable can be obtained by using the '&' operator.

ü  All structure members inside the structure can be accessed using pointer, by assigning the structure variable address to the pointer.

Syntax :

struct structname

{

datatype  member1;

datatype  member2;

}variable1, *ptrvariable1;    

Here, ptrvariable1 can be assigned to any other structure of the same type, and can be used to access the members of its structure.

EXAMPLE PROGRAM:

In this program, “record1” is normal structure variable and “ptr” is pointer structure variable. As you know, Dot(.) operator is used to access the data using normal structure variable and arrow(->) is used to access data using pointer variable.

#include <stdio.h>

struct student

{

     int id;

     char name[30];

     float percentage;

};

main()

{

     int i;

     struct student record1 = {1, "Raju", 90.5};

     struct student *ptr;

     ptr = &record1;    

         printf("Records of STUDENT1: \n");

         printf("  Id is: %d \n", ptr->id);

         printf("  Name is: %s \n", ptr->name);

         printf("  Percentage is: %f \n\n", ptr->percentage);

         getch();

}