Thank you very much for the kind feedback Dimitrije! I'm really glad to hear that this video helped you out, and that you enjoyed the explanation. Pointers are super tricky I think, many people tell me they find them to be the hardest part of understanding C. 🙂

That's very true, it's very difficult to understand lower level programming languages like C without some idea as to how computers are working at the hardware level (at least, the big picture anyways). :-)

I’m glad you’re enjoying the videos, thank you for the kind feedback! :-)

I'm really glad you enjoyed it! :-)

You're very welcome, thank you for sharing this positive feedback, I'm really glad that you enjoy the material! :-)

That’s awesome, thank you for the positive feedback, I’m really glad to hear the videos are helping you recap concepts and get started with C! :-)

You’re very welcome Axel, I’m glad you enjoyed the presentation style and that the video was able to help you learn about pointers! :-)

Awesome, I'm happy the video was able to help you out! :-)

You’re very welcome! :-) Thanks for sharing this feedback, I’m really glad to hear the videos are helping you out!

That's awesome, I'm glad it helped you Lovro! :-)

You’re very welcome! :-) I’m so glad to hear you learned a lot watching it, much love back at you from Canada!

You're welcome Sean, I'm very glad to hear these videos are helping you out! :-)

I'm really glad that you're enjoying the content!!! :-) And thank you very much for the kind feedback, that is really motivating for me to hear that.

You’re very welcome, I’m so glad to hear this video helped you to understand pointers! :-)

You're welcome! :-)

Thank you so much for watching the videos and subscribing Kyoshi! :-) Another thing you could do to help the channel if you like is sharing the channel with others (classmates, friends, social media, etc).

You're welcome Raquel! :-D

You're welcome Ido! :-) And thank you very much for sharing that positive feedback with me. A big part of the reason why I love making these videos is that they might be able to help students like you, so that means a lot to me that the videos are helping you out!

I’m really glad you’re enjoying the videos Abdelmuniem, thank you for sharing this kind feedback! :-)

Haha thank you! :-D

You’re very welcome, I’m glad it was helpful for you! :-)

Thank you very much for the kind feedback. :-)

I'm glad you enjoyed it Eldin! :-)

You’re very welcome Tim! :-)

I agree the notation for pointers is confusing. 🙂 I also don't like how the * operator is used to both declare a pointer and as the dereference operator. I'm not even sure I like the name "pointers", I've found people seem to understand them better when they're called "memory addresses".

@@PortfolioCourses, I guess I’ll call them memory addresses and regard pointer as a nickname. :-)

@@Mnogojazyk Hahaha 🙂

Awesome I'm glad to hear that Sami, congratulations on the 'aha moment'! :-)

Awesome, welcome aboard Ivan! :-)

You're welcome Tornike! :-) The parameters of the swap function do need to be int *a and int *b (i.e. pointers) for the swap to work, it won't work if they are just int a and int b, as those would int parameters and not pointers.

You’re very welcome! :-)

I'm really glad to hear you enjoy them, thank you for the positive feedback! :-)

That's excellent! :-)

You’re welcome Nhật! :-)

You're welcome Sidney! :-) And -> is called the arrow operator, it's for working with pointers to structs, and in some sense it is a bit like the * operator yes, it's covered in this video here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rZuIgJR_nM6wl5c.html

@@PortfolioCourses This helps thank you!

I'm glad you like it! :-)

You're welcome! :-)

This video covers string input with spaces: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nJ5la5yKnrKseJs.html. This video covers validating that a string contains an integer: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jZmUp9yL157Wk40.html. But that's more for fun, if you really want to do validation I would suggest checking out regex: www.scaler.com/topics/c-regex/

You're welcome Krishna! :-)

It's because when we call swap we have: swap(&x, &y); That will set a to point to x and b point to y. :-)

Sometimes we have things like data structures that persist across a series of function calls, and what the functions work with is a pointer to that data structure in order to access it. So for an example: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j9Cofryp1cyZYXk.html. It would typically be something that's pretty important to the program, to have that same state be accessed by multiple functions.

You’re welcome! :-)

Thank you Nahuel! :-D

I use gcc. :-)

That's a good question Rezuwan, but it would depend on a lot of things. Like if it's the first language that someone is ever learning it will take longer than if they know other languages already. Or if they are learning it full-time vs part-time, etc. I would say C can be learned "well enough" to work in it by taking a 4 month course at a university or college, or by self-studying full-time for a month. And I would say it would take a year of really working with it on some projects to get really "good" at it, though with programming, learning never stops. :-)

hahaha I've never been called lit before, so thank you! :-)

malloc returns a void pointer, and in C++ it is necessary to "cast the type" (change the type) to (char *) or whatever other type of pointer your variable is... in C this isn't necessary. This answer has more details: stackoverflow.com/a/605856. And this answers explains some reasons why I don't do it: stackoverflow.com/a/605858. Maybe next class you can tell your teacher they don't need to do that. ;-)

@@PortfolioCourses thank you!

@@raquelbraunschweig2938 you're welcome! :-D

Thank you Marilyn! 😊

That will store memory address of the variable b into the pointer variable a.

@@PortfolioCourses but you placed * before a you didn't say a=&b;

@@edward3105 So if we had: int *a = &b; this would be equivalent to this: int *a; a = &b; I think this part of C is kind of confusing, but if we're declaring a pointer and initializing it to a memory address on the same line, then we have the * in front of the pointer variable name. And that's just because we need it there to declare it the variable as a pointer. But after we've declared a pointer, whenever we use the * with our pointer variable it works as the de-reference operator that "gets what the pointer is pointing to".

@@PortfolioCourses I kinda thought about that but in this situation like you showed in other video char *s2 =" abcdef" why I don't declare the pointer like this char *s2= &a and let's say char a[ ]= {"abcdef"}

@@edward3105 Oh so in if we have: char a[] = "abcdef"; Then a is char array that has been initialized to the string "abcdef". So.. a[0] = 'a' a[1] = 'b' .. a[5] = 'f' a[6] = '\0' And then if we want to make s2 a pointer to a in this case we would say: char *s2 = a; The reason is that arrays are different than variables. If we had: char x = 'm'; THEN we would have: char *s2 = &x; and s2 would be a pointer to the x, it would store the memory address of x. But in the case of: char a[] = "abdef"; 'a' is a char array, and when we just use the name of a char array like 'a' what we actually get is a memory address, there is no need to use the & operator. So if we have: char *s2 = a; then we would actually get s2 storing the memory address of the array 'a' (the memory address of the first char in that array) We say that the array 'decays to a pointer' in this situation. If you try this: char a[] = "abcdef"; printf("%p", a); you'll see what I mean, in that 'a' is just a memory address. So we don't need to apply the & operator to *get* the memory address like we do a variable.

If you have a pointer in a struct, then when you do an assignment, yes a "shallow copy" will occur as it's really only the pointer that will be copied from one struct to the next. And string literals are immutable, yes. :-)

Thhhhhaaaaankk you!!! 😀

I've never heard of that channel before Victor, but I looked it up just now and it looks cool! :-)

They *begin* at that one memory address, the memory address is the memory address of the first element in the array. :-)

@@PortfolioCourses oh I see, I understand now. thanks fam ^^

Great question Victor! :-) What you're talking about is a very common problem for computer programmers. I've created this playlist to try to start speaking to this problem: kzfaq.info/sun/PLA1FTfKBAEX6e_cFeqZCuUcexEJZS4OOQ. But the playlist is still new and I have to make more videos on that one. Essentially though, it takes time and lots and lots of practice to get better at "creating solutions". Every time we solve a problem or figure out a new program our brain adds another "solution" to a library inside our heads. When we face new problems, we look back at this "library" for help. The new problem might not be identical to old problems, but it shares common characteristics to old problems. The more problems we see and learn about the more common characteristics there will be to 'new' problems, and the easier they get to solve. There is more to it then this... we get better at debugging with experience too, for example. But this is a big part of it, just lots of experience and practice. :-)

Which time of the video is this? Arrays decay to pointers when used in certain ways, and pointers can be used with "array notation". This video about passing arrays to functions addresses some of this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pctilb18z8-7ops.html. As does this video on pointer notation: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nr13jKV-tJuZY3U.html. :-)

I'm glad you think so too! :-)

I'm glad you found this useful Karan! :-)

I think the usage of * to both declare a pointer and de-reference can be confusing. I also think the syntax: int *p; is confusing because the type 'int' isn't really the type that p stores. Really, p stores a memory address, and int is the type of data that p is pointing TO, i.e. the type of data at the memory address that p is itself storing. But for regular variables, 'int' would be the type. That different can be confusing too I think. Imagine if instead we had: address p{int}; Or something like that to indicate p stores a memory address of type int. To me that, or something like it, could help. Oh well, it is what it is now! :-)

Thanks for the feedback Kris, I hear you. I get into this about 9:30 into the video. Normally I like to start with "why" too but in the case of pointers, 1) most people that find this video are students that are confused from trying to learn pointers from their teachers and that are looking to understand the "nuts and bolts" of what is happening, 2) it's hard to explain the use cases without explaining memory addresses and at that point I might as well explain pointers anyways. 🙂

Ah the joys of manual memory management! :-)