Programming in C

Working with Pointers and Structures
243
Once again, it should be pointed out that there is no real motivation shown here as to
why you should even bother using a structure pointer when it seems as though you can
get along just fine without it (as you did in Program 9.1).You will discover the motivation
shortly.
Structures Containing Pointers
Naturally, a pointer also can be a member of a structure. In the structure definition
struct intPtrs
{
int *p1;
int *p2;
};
a structure called intPtrs is defined to contain two integer pointers, the first one called
p1 and the second one p2.You can define a variable of type struct intPtrs in the
usual way:
struct intPtrs pointers;
The variable pointers can now be used in the normal fashion, remembering that
pointers itself is not a pointer, but a structure variable that has two pointers as its members.
Program 11.5 shows how the intPtrs structure can be handled in a C program.
Program 11.5 Using Structures Containing Pointers
// Function to use structures containing pointers
#include
int main (void)
{
struct intPtrs
{
int *p1;
int *p2;
};
struct intPtrs pointers;
int i1 = 100, i2;
pointers.p1 = &i1;
pointers.p2 = &i2;
*pointers.p2 = -97;