From today's course - a new example showing pointers to pointers to pointers. But why?

C pointers are useful in many ways:
• they let you pass a single value into a function that holds a whole collection of data
• they let you call by 'name' so that functions can alter values (see here)
• they let you access additional dynamic memory (example of that - here)
• they let functions return an item that's of unknown size.

But why pointers to pointers? Because they let you hold and process collections withing collections easily. As well as the first example, we have another example that does this - pascal's triangle all in dynamic memory - here.

And in real life, it can represent a whole data heirarcy too.
• I have a number of food product objects
• Each is in a dish object
• A number of dish objects meal up a meal object
• and we build up a collection of meal objects into a daily diet.
And we could go on.
• A familiy's daily diet objects makes a shopping object
• and a store's customers each day make up a turnover
I think I may have six levels of pointers there.

This all gets very hard to write and to look after; structured coding can help, but far better to use objects, which is where C++ comes in. I'm teaching a C++ Course tomorrow ... so I expect you may find some more examples along these line on the next blog entries.
(written 2010-03-10)

 C207 - C and C based languages - Pointers and references
  [3399] From fish, loaves and apples to money, plastic cards and BACS (Perl references explained) - (2011-08-20)
  [3386] Adding the pieces together to make a complete language - C - (2011-08-11)
  [3242] How to return 2 values from a function (C++ and C) - more uses of pointers - (2011-04-10)
  [3238] Bradshaw, Ben and Bill. And some C and C++ pointers and references too. - (2011-04-09)
  [3121] New year, new C Course - (2011-01-05)
  [3004] Increment operators for counting - Perl, PHP, C and others - (2010-10-18)
  [2572] The what and why of C pointers - (2010-01-13)
  [2005] Variables and pointers and references - C and C++ - (2009-01-23)
  [1497] Training Season Starts again! - (2008-01-07)
  [1478] Some new C programming examples - files, structs, unions etc - (2007-12-19)
  [1155] Pointers in C - (2007-04-19)

Back to Efficient use of dynamic memory - C and realloc

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Forward to Melksham - Carnival, Party in the Park, and Spot the Oddity

Make and makefiles - a commented example to help you learn
Multiple Inheritance in C++ - a complete example
Dear Planners, please provide viable alternatives
Melksham - Carnival, Party in the Park, and Spot the Oddity
Pointers to Pointers to Pointers - what is the point?
Efficient use of dynamic memory - C and realloc
Is it worth it?
Web page to telephone calls / links using an iPhone
Random thoughts on Melksham Town Planning and development
Early Spring walk in Melksham