Pointer Arithmetic: ++*ptr or *ptr++?

Question

I am learning C language and quite confused the differences between ++*ptr and *ptr++.

For example:

int x = 19;
int *ptr = &x;

I know ++*ptr and *ptr++ produce different results but I am not sure why is that?

Answer 1

These statements produce different results because of the way in which the operators bind. In particular, the prefix ++ operator has the same precedence as *, and they associate right-to-left. Thus

++*ptr

is parsed as

++(*ptr)

meaning "increment the value pointed at by ptr,". On the other hand, the postfix ++ operator has higher precedence than the dereferrence operator *. Thefore

*ptr++

means

*(ptr++)

which means "increment ptr to go to the element after the one it points at, then dereference its old value" (since postfix ++ hands back the value the pointer used to have).

In the context you described, you probably want to write ++*ptr, which would increment x indirectly through ptr. Writing *ptr++ would be dangerous because it would march ptr forward past x, and since x isn't part of an array the pointer would be dangling somewhere in memory (perhaps on top of itself!)

Hope this helps!