Difference between -> and . in a struct?

Question

If I have a struct like

struct account {
   int account_number;
};

Then what\'s the difference between doing

myAccount.acco         


        

Answer 1

-> is a shorthand for (*x).field, where x is a pointer to a variable of type struct account, and field is a field in the struct, such as account_number.

If you have a pointer to a struct, then saying

accountp->account_number;

is much more concise than

(*accountp).account_number;