Is memcpy of a pointer the same as assignment?

Question

Introduction: This question is part of my collection of C and C++ (and C/C++ common subset) questions regarding the cases where pointers object with strictly ide

Answer 1

A pointer is simply an unsigned integer whose value is the address of some location in memory. Overwriting the contents of a pointer variable is no different than overwriting the contents of normal int variable.

So yes, doing e.g. memcpy (&p, &pa1, sizeof p) is equivalent of the assignment p = pa1, but might be less efficient.

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Lets try it a bit differently instead:

You have pa1 which points to some object (or rather, one beyond some object), then you have the pointer &pa1 which points to the variable pa1 (i.e. the where the variable pa1 is located in memory).

Graphically it would look something like this:

+------+     +-----+     +-------+
| &pa1 | --> | pa1 | --> | &a[1] |
+------+     +-----+     +-------+

_{[Note: &a[0] + 1 is the same as &a[1]]}