char *name?

[matsko]

What does the asterix after the char identifier which is apart of the variable name mean?

Ex. char *file = "something";

[dwks]

It means you're declaring a pointer, in this case a pointer initialized to a string located in read-only memory.

[whiteflags]

In that context it makes file a pointer to char. But the asterisk isn't really a part of the variable name. The same pointer could be written,

char* file;

which is the same as

char * file;

which is also

char *file;

A lot of people will tell you that the asterisk is just there to remind you that file is a pointer, which is true, until you decide to use the dereference operator to get the value stored in memory:

*file = "something new";

[dwks]

It's similar, but not the same as, an array.

const char *progname = "program";
char progname2[] = "program";

[DavidG]

To put it simply(ish), a pointer variable isn't a char, or int, or whatever it's pointing to - it just holds the memory address of whatever it's pointing to. (As an unsigned integer, I believe. Though that doesn't make much difference unless you want to alter it or put it into a printf statement.)