Power of C: Pointers

In Chapter 2 , “Quick Revision of Powerful C Constructs,” we discussed the essential C programming concepts such as functions, arrays, strings, structures, and unions. In this chapter, we discuss the most important concepts of C programming, called pointers. In C programming, pointers help developers to implement efficient codes to meet the performance of C applications in terms of minimizing latencies in memory access and energy consumption. Pointers offer flexibility in terms of implementing and accessing complex data structures such as linked lists, trees, hash tables, and protocol messages. Moreover, pointers to functions and generic pointer concepts are helpful for developers to implement advanced programming approaches such as generic algorithms, generic data structures, and polymorphism concepts.