Tips on Pointers and Arrays in C

*p++ vs. (*p)++ 

*p++ means *(p++)

• ++ binds to p, not to *p
• ++ will increment "p," not "*p," which is the thing that "p" points to

The value of the expression *p++ is the value that p pointed to before being incremented (*p)

Two useful charts

Pointer arithmetic notes

(~pointer~) += (~number~); means (~pointer~) += ~number~) * sizeof((~type~));

• Pointer arithmetic addition adds multiples of the type size to the memory address
• Ex. If p is a pointer to an integer, then p += 1 means p += 1 * sizeof(int) 
• (~pointer name~) + 1 points to the next object in memory (returns a pointer to the next element) 
• (~pointer name~) + i points to the i-th object beyond (~pointer name~) in memory 
• (~pointer name~) += i increments (~pointer name~) to point to i elements beyond itself 

Types of valid pointer arithmetic

• Adding an integer to a pointer
• Subtracting 2 pointers (in the same array)
• Comparing pointers (via < <= == != > >=)
• Comparing pointer to NULL (which indicates that the pointer points to nothing)

Types of illegal pointer arithmetic

• Adding 2 pointers
• Multiplying 2 pointers
• Subtracting a pointer from an integer