Two questions about pointers

I have a question about pointers. What do they enable passing VARIABLES to FUNCTIONS by (ex. value, reference)?

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I also have a code below that looks right, but is wrong (numbers are correct, but code doesn't work).

Code:

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int *int_ptr;
int primes[] = {2,3,5,7};
int composite[] = {4,6,8,9};

int_ptr = primes;
composite = int_ptr;

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Is it that both "primes" and "composite" cannot both be assigned to int_ptr?

For the first question, what do you think the answer is? What conclusion does the process of elimination lead you to?

#2: You cannot assign to an array.
You can assign stuff to the array elements, but you cannot assign to the array itself.
If you want to copy stuff in then you would generally use a loop.
If you want to point to either of the two arrays, then you have the last assignment statement back-to-front, and you'd probably want some if-else logic.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dynesclan

I have a question about pointers. What do they enable passing VARIABLES to FUNCTIONS by (ex. value, reference)?

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C doesn't allow passing by reference. Parameters are pushed onto a stack, which is popped when the function returns. But what you can do is pass a pointer to a variable that is declared in caller. Then the fucntion can write throught the pointer to it.
This is how you return more than one value from a function.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Malcolm McLean

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C doesn't allow passing by reference. Parameters are pushed onto a stack, which is popped when the function returns. But what you can do is pass a pointer to a variable that is declared in caller. Then the fucntion can write throught the pointer to it.
This is how you return more than one value from a function.

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Then pointers do pass by value instead of by reference in caller?

Yes, the pointer itself is passed by value.