Can a pointer ever point to itself?

Question

My question is: If a pointer variable has the same address as its value, is it really pointing to itself?

For example - in the following piece of c

Answer 1

Well, first I'd change the code around:

int **a;
a = (int **)&a;  // otherwise you get a warning, since &a is int ***

I'm not sure why you would do this, but it is allowed.

printf("The address of a is %p\n", &a);
printf("a holds the address %p\n", a);
printf("The value at %p is %p\n", a, *a); // the *a is why we made a an int **

They should print out the same thing.

The address of a is 0x7fffe211d078
a holds the address 0x7fffe211d078
The value at 0x7fffe211d078 is 0x7fffe211d078

Note that this is not a good idea, as that very first cast a = (int **)&a is a hack to force a to hold a value that it shouldn't hold. You declare it an int ** but try to force an int *** into it. Technically the sizes are the same, but in general don't do that because people expect that an int * holds the address of something that can be used as an int, an so on.