Memory Address in C

In C, memory addresses play a crucial role in managing and manipulating data. Every variable in C is stored in a specific memory location, and accessing and manipulating variables often involves working with their memory addresses. C provides a reference operator, denoted by the ampersand symbol (`&`), to obtain the memory address of a variable.

Memory Address:

A memory address refers to the unique identifier of a location in the computer's memory where data is stored. Each variable in C occupies a specific memory address, which allows the program to access and modify its value. Memory addresses are represented as hexadecimal values.

Reference Operator (&):

The reference operator (`&`) in C is used to obtain the memory address of a variable. When applied to a variable, it returns the address where the variable is stored in memory. The syntax for using the reference operator is `&variable`, where `variable` is the name of the variable.

Here's an example to demonstrate the usage of the reference operator:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int num = 10;

    // Printing the memory address of the variable 'num'
    printf("Memory Address: %p\n", &num);

    return 0;
}

In this code, we have a variable `num` of type `int` initialized with the value `10`. By using the reference operator `&`, we can obtain the memory address of `num`. The `%p` format specifier in `printf` is used to print the memory address.

Output:

Memory Address: 0x7ffeed2dd82c

NOTE: The output will vary depending on the system, but it will be a hexadecimal representation of the memory address where the variable `num` is stored. (alert-success)

Memory addresses are particularly useful when working with pointers in C. Pointers allow you to store and manipulate memory addresses, enabling dynamic memory allocation, passing arguments by reference, and more advanced memory-related operations.