Can we differentiate a variable against a pointer variable

Question

Yesterday while I was coding in C, my friend asked me pointing to a variable is it pointer or a variable ? I stucked up for a while. I didnt find an aswer to it , I just have to go back and search it and tell him.But I was thinking is there any function to differentiate them. Can we differentiate a variable against a pointer variable

int a;
sizeof(a); // gives 2 bytes
int *b;
sizeof(b); // gives 2 bytes
// if we use sizeof() we get same answer and we cant say which is pointer
// and which is a variable

Is there a way to find out a variable is a normal variable or a pointer? I mean can someone say that it is a pointer or a variable after looking at your variable that you have declared at the beginning and then going down 1000 lines of your code?

After the comment I wanted to say explicitly it's a 16 bit system architecture.

Answer 1

First, the question "Is it a pointer or a variable" doesn't make much sense. A pointer variable is a variable, just as an integer variable, or an array variable, is a variable.

So the real question is whether something is a pointer or not.

No, there's no function that can tell you whether something is a pointer or not. And if you think about it, in a statically typed language like C, there can't be. Functions take arguments of certain specified types. You can't pass a variable to a function unless the type (pointer or otherwise) is correct in the first place.