C Programming Simple Pointers

Question

I'm a beginner at learning pointers. Here is my code. (Note: I'm still trying to get my head around pointers so my code won't be clean.)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[]){

int a = 1;
char b = 's';
double c = 3.14;
int *ptra;
int *ptrb;
int *ptrc;

ptra = &a;
ptrb = &b;
ptrc = &c;

printf("I initialised int as %d and char as %c and double as %.2f\n", a, b, c);
printf("The address of A is %p and the contents of A is %d\n", ptra, *ptra);
printf("The address of B is %p and the contents of B is %c\n", ptrb, *ptrb);
printf("The address of C is %p and the contents of C is %.2f\n", ptrc, *ptrc);

I expected the following output:

I initialised int as 1 and char as s and double as 3.14
The address of A is 0xbf933094 and the contents of A is 1
The address of B is 0xbf933093 and the contents of B is s
The address of C is 0xbf933098 and the contents of C is 3.14

But instead I get this:

I initialised int as 1 and char as s and double as 3.14
The address of A is 0xbf933094 and the contents of A is 1
The address of B is 0xbf933093 and the contents of B is s
The address of C is 0xbf933098 and the contents of C is 427698.00000

Can someone help for the large number I got when printing the contents of C? Why don't I get 3.14? (The number is actually longer than that but it didn't fit into this textbox. :-))

Answer 1

You are declaring ptra, ptrb and ptrc as pointers to ints. But the type of a pointer is based on what it points to, so it really should be:

int    *ptra;
char   *ptrb;
double *ptrc;

In your specific case, your program is trying to interpret a double value through an int pointer. Since the sizes of these data types differ on your machine, some of the bits of the double get discarded and you end up with the strange number you're seeing.

This may not always happen the same way - the result of accessing something through the wrong type of pointer is not defined by the C language, but it still might compile. C programmers refer to this as undefined behaviour (a phrase you should really come to terms with if you want to learn C!).

There is also the fact that when you call printf, you need to give it variables of the type it expects from the format string. So if you give it a format string where the first placeholder is %.f, you must give it a first argument that's a double. If you don't, printf will also exhibit undefined behaviour and could do anything (the undefined behaviour may be strange output, crashing, or simply putting out the number you expect... until the worst possible moment).

Answer 2

Your pointers are all of type int. That is not correct. Replace those by

int *ptra;
char *ptrb;
double *ptrc;