HP C/iX Reference Manual (31506-90011)

68 Chapter5
Expressions
Address and Indirection Operators
Address and Indirection Operators
The address () and indirection (*) operators are used to locate the address of an operand
and indirectly access the contents of the address.
Syntax
cast-expression
* cast-expression
Description
The operand of the unary indirection operator (*) must be a pointer to type T. The resulting
type is T. If type T is not a function type, the unary-expression is an lvalue.
The contents of pointers are memory addresses. No range checking is done on indirection
operations. Specifically, storing values indirectly through a pointer that was not correctly
initialized can cause bounds errors or destruction of valid data.
The operand of the unary address-of operator () must be a function designator or an lvalue.
This precludes taking the address of constants (for example, 3), because 3 is not an lvalue.
If the type of the operand is T, the result of the address of operator is a pointer to type T.
The operator may not be applied to bit fields or objects with the register storage class.
It is always true that if E is an lvalue, then *E is an lvalue expression equal to E.