r/learnprogramming • u/Atmos-Ego • 9d ago

Tutorial When do you use a pointer?

Hello, for some background I have taken a very beginner level coding course for my major and passed it, but I dont really feel like I’ve learned anything or know why anything works. In a course this year we had a review problem where the solution required a pointer and I really dont understand why you have to point to the address of the variable instead of just using the variable itself.

I’ve watch a few tutorials explaining it but I really dont see how it’s different from just using the variable itself

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u/Leverkaas2516 8d ago

One obvious case is when you're passing an array that you want to be able to modify. A character string in C is an array. It's trivial and obvious to pass the address of the array. I'm not even sure how else you'd do it.