indirection in pointer

If you declare a variable, its name is a direct reference to its value. If you have a pointer to a variable, or any other object in memory, you have an indirect reference to its value. If p is a pointer, the value of p is the address of the object. *p means “apply the indirection operator to p”; its value is the value of the object that p points to. (Some people would read it as “Go indirect on p.”)

*p is an lvalue; like a variable, it can go on the left side of an assignment operator, to change the value. If p is a pointer to a constant, *p is not a modifiable lvalue; it can’t go on the left side of an assignment.

Consider the following program. It shows that when p points to i, *p can appear wherever i can.

C program

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>
 
int main() {
	int i;
	int *p;
	i = 5;
	p = &
	i;
	/* now *p == i */
	printf("i=%d, p=%P, *p=%d\n", i, p, *p);
	*p = 6;
	/* same as i = 6 */
	printf("i=%d, p=%P, *p=%d\n", i, p, *p);
	return 0;
}

A circular list that uses infinite indirection

#include <stdio.h>
struct circ_list {
	char    value[ 3 ];
	/* e.g., "st" (incl '') */
	struct circ_list        *next;
}
;
struct circ_list    suffixes[] = {
	"th", & suffixes[ 1 ], 
	/* 0th */
	"st", & suffixes[ 2 ], 
	/* 1st */
	"nd", & suffixes[ 3 ], 
	/* 2nd */
	"rd", & suffixes[ 4 ], 
	/* 3rd */
	"th", & suffixes[ 5 ], 
	/* 4th */
	"th", & suffixes[ 6 ], 
	/* 5th */
	"th", & suffixes[ 7 ], 
	/* 6th */
	"th", & suffixes[ 8 ], 
	/* 7th */
	"th", & suffixes[ 9 ], 
	/* 8th */
	"th", & suffixes[ 0 ], 
	/* 9th */
}
;
#define MAX 20
int main() {
	int i = 0;
	struct circ_list    *p = suffixes;
	while (i value );
		++i;
		p = p->next;
	}
	return 0;
}

Each element in suffixes has one suffix (two characters plus the terminating NUL character) and a pointer to the next element. next is a pointer to something that has a pointer, to something that has a pointer, ad infinitum.

The example is dumb because the number of elements in suffixes is fixed. It would be simpler to have an array of suffixes and to use the i%10’th element. In general, circular lists can grow and shrink.