Directly assigning values to C Pointers

Question

I\'ve just started learning C and I\'ve been running some simple programs using MinGW for Windows to understand how pointers work. I tried the following:

#in         


        

Answer 1

First Program with comments

#include 

int main(){
    int *ptr;             //Create a pointer that points to random memory address

    *ptr = 20;            //Dereference that pointer, 
                          // and assign a value to random memory address.
                          //Depending on external (not inside your program) state
                          // this will either crash or SILENTLY CORRUPT another 
                          // data structure in your program.  

    printf("%d", *ptr);   //Print contents of same random memory address
                          // May or may not crash, depending on who owns this address

    return 0;             
}

Second Program with comments

#include 

int main(){
    int *ptr;              //Create pointer to random memory address

    int q = 50;            //Create local variable with contents int 50

    ptr = &q;              //Update address targeted by above created pointer to point
                           // to local variable your program properly created

    printf("%d", *ptr);    //Happily print the contents of said local variable (q)
    return 0;
}

The key is you cannot use a pointer until you know it is assigned to an address that you yourself have managed, either by pointing it at another variable you created or to the result of a malloc call.

Using it before is creating code that depends on uninitialized memory which will at best crash but at worst work sometimes, because the random memory address happens to be inside the memory space your program already owns. God help you if it overwrites a data structure you are using elsewhere in your program.