Pointers

Equivalence of Arrays and Pointers
• In C and C++ the name of an array specified without a subscript denotes a pointer to the first element of the array
• For example, in the following statement:
  int int_array[1000];
  The variable name int_array refers to the address of int_array[0]
  int_array is not a valid lvalue, but int_array[0] is
• A pointer is just an address (or integer) and we can perform arithmetic oprations on it
  int_array+i and &int_array[i] are equivalent
  *(int_array + i) and int_array[i] are equivalent
• Consider the following code:
  int int_array[1000], *b;
  b = int_array;
  After the first statement, int_array[0] is defined but b[0] is not
  After the second statement, b[0] is valid and has the same contents as int_array[0]
  [] have a higher precedence than &
  b is an lvalue while int_array is not. Statements of the form int_array = ... are not correct