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Post-increment on a dereferenced pointer?

Asked 2009-05-13T19:01:50.967
71

Trying to understand the behaviour of pointers in C, I was a little surprised by the following (example code below):

#include <stdio.h>

void add_one_v1(int *our_var_ptr)
{
    *our_var_ptr = *our_var_ptr +1;
}

void add_one_v2(int *our_var_ptr)
{
    *our_var_ptr++;
}

int main()
{
    int testvar;

    testvar = 63;
    add_one_v1(&(testvar));         /* Try first version of the function */
    printf("%d\n", testvar);        /* Prints out 64                     */
    printf("@ %p\n\n", &(testvar));

    testvar = 63;
    add_one_v2(&(testvar));         /* Try first version of the function */
    printf("%d\n", testvar);        /* Prints 63 ?                       */
    printf("@ %p\n", &(testvar));   /* Address remains identical         */
}

Output:

64
@ 0xbf84c6b0

63
@ 0xbf84c6b0

What exactly does the *our_var_ptr++ statement in the second function (add_one_v2) do since it's clearly not the same as *our_var_ptr = *our_var_ptr +1?

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1 Answer

8

As the others have pointed out, operator precedence cause the expression in the v2 function to be seen as *(our_var_ptr++).

However, since this is a post-increment operator, it's not quite true to say that it increments the pointer and then dereferences it. If this were true I don't think you'd be getting 63 as your output, since it would be returning the value in the next memory location. Actually, I believe the logical sequence of operations is:

  1. Save off the current value of the pointer
  2. Increment the pointer
  3. Dereference the pointer value saved in step 1

As htw explained, you aren't seeing the change to the value of the pointer because it is being passed by value to the function.

answered 2009-05-13T19:13:12.480

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