C Program To Find Size of Pointer Variables

Lets write a C program to find out the size or the number of bytes occupied by pointer variables of different data type in your computers memory.

Related Read:
Sizeof Operator in C Programming Language
Basics of Pointers In C Programming Language

Video Tutorial: C Program To Find Size of Pointer Variables


[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaAZYSvBog]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaAZYSvBog [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]


Source Code: C Program To Find Size of Pointer Variables

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Size of int pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(int*));
    printf("Size of char pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(char*));
    printf("Size of float pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(float*));
    printf("Size of double pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(double*));
    printf("Size of long int pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(long*));
    printf("Size of short int pointer = %d bytes.\n", sizeof(short*));

    return 0;
}

Output:
Size of int pointer = 4 bytes.
Size of char pointer = 4 bytes.
Size of float pointer = 4 bytes.
Size of double pointer = 4 bytes.
Size of long int pointer = 4 bytes.
Size of short int pointer = 4 bytes.

If you observe the output of above C program you can see that pointer variables, irrespective of their data type, consume 4 bytes of data in the memory.

Note: “But the number of bytes allocated for different data types and pointer variables are machine dependent. 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit computers allocate different bytes of memory. But pointer variables of any data type will always have same number of bytes occupied in the memory. For Example, if the computer allocates 2 bytes for pointer variable, then all the pointer variables, irrespective of their data type, will occupy 2 bytes in the memory.”

A pointer variable of type float holds only the address of floating point variable. A char pointer variable holds only the address of char type variable. But still the address of all these type of pointer variable is number. Addresses are always numbers and it can’t be a character, a string or real/floating/double numbers.

Also note that addresses are unique. There can’t be 2 location in your computers memory with same address.

Note: Observe that I’m using %d as format specifier while printing the size of data type, that’s because sizeof() function/method returns integer type data i.e., number of bytes occupied in the computers memory.

Note: sizeof() method takes a single argument and it is not a function whose value is determined at run time, but rather an operator whose value is determined by compiler – so it’s called as compile time unary operator.

For list of all c programming interviews / viva question and answers visit: C Programming Interview / Viva Q&A List

For full C programming language free video tutorial list visit:C Programming: Beginner To Advance To Expert

Using Scanf in C Program

In our previous video tutorial you learnt about Integers, Float and Character data types and their format specifier. In today’s video lets see an example of using all 3 data types along with strings.

You’ll also learn to get user input from console using scanf function/method present in stdio.h header file.

Example: int, float, char

 
#include< stdio.h >

int main()
{
    int a;
    float b;
    char ltr;

    printf("Enter 2 numbers and a single character\n");
    scanf("%d %f %c", &a, &b, <r);

    printf("\nYou entered %d, %f and %c", a, b, ltr);

    return 0;
}

Output:
Enter 2 numbers and a single character
1 2 i

You entered 1, 2.000000 and i

Example for string type

 
#include < stdio.h >

int main()
{
    char c[10];

    printf("Enter a company name\n");
    scanf("%s", c);

    printf("\nYou entered %s", c);

    return 0;
}

Output:
Enter a company name
Microsoft
You entered Microsoft

Using Scanf() To Read Int, Float, Char and String Data Type: C Programming


[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myqWGZePUgg]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myqWGZePUgg [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]


Keyword for Integer is int and its format specifier is %d.
Keyword for Float is float and its format specifier is %f.
Keyword for Character is char and its format specifier is %c.

Note 1: If you input decimal value for a integer variable, it only stores integer part of the value and discards the decimal value.

Note 2: printf and scanf are kind of opposite. Because printf converts all the numbers, characters etc and displays everything in text format on to the console. While, scanf takes all the text entered by the user in the console and converts them into respective data type based on the format specifier present in scanf statement.