Thread: confused, whats the relationship between scanf and pointers

Originally posted by temp
when scanf is used, why does the '&' sign need to be used? does it mean that when a variable is declared it is given some location in memory and also assigned a pointer that points to it?

When you define an int, a memory location is assigned to hold it. The & operator will tell the compiler to use the "address of" that int.

So:
>int i;
>i = 10;
i is an int that has a value of 10. To get i's address we use
>&i

Now, scanf() requires we pass pointers to it. A pointer is a special variable type that holds the "address of" something. So, in scanf() we can use the "address of" our int, i.
>scanf("%d", &i);