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Chapter: Programming and Data Structures

Function pointers

C programming language allows you to pass a pointer to a function. To do so, simply declare the function parameter as a pointer type.


FUNCTION POINTERS

 

C programming language allows you to pass a pointer to a function. To do so, simply declare the function parameter as a pointer type.

 

Following a simple example where we pass an unsigned long pointer to a function and change the value inside the function which reflects back in the calling function:

 

#include <stdio.h> #include <time.h>

 

void getSeconds(unsigned long *par); int main ()

{

 

unsigned long sec; getSeconds( &sec );

 

/* print the actual value */ printf("Number of seconds: %ld\n", sec ); return 0;

}

 

void getSeconds(unsigned long *par)

{

 

/* get the current number of seconds */ *par = time( NULL );

 

return;

}

 

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:Number of

 

seconds :     1294450468

The function, which can accept a pointer, can also accept an array as shown in the following example:

 

#include <stdio.h>

 

/* function declaration */

 

double getAverage(int *arr, int size); int main ()

 

{

/* an int array with 5 elements */

 

int balance[5] = {1000, 2, 3, 17, 50}; double avg;

 

/* pass pointer to the array as an argument */ avg = getAverage( balance, 5 ) ;

 

/* output the returned value */ printf("Average value is: %f\n", avg );

 

return 0;

}

 

double getAverage(int *arr, int size)

 

{

 

int i, sum = 0; double avg;

for (i = 0; i < size; ++i)

 

{

sum += arr[i];

 

}

 

avg = (double)sum / size; return avg;

}

 

When the above code is compiled together and executed, it produces the following result:

 

Average value is: 214.40000

 

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