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wrote:

> What does the * mean before the p in the following code? I figure
> that it has something to do with pointers, but I haven't learned about
> pointers yet.

* w.r.t. pointers means to dereference a pointer. Sounds complicated
but isn't.

char *p;

p is a pointer to a char. now

p = "a"

means assign the address of the literal "a" to p.

*p = 'a'

means to find out where in memory p points to and put the char 'a' there.

> ========
>
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include <string.h>
>
> char answer[100], *p;
> printf("Type something:\n");
> fgets(answer, sizeof answer, stdin);
> if((p = strchr(answer, '\n')) != NULL)
> *p = '\0';
> printf("You typed \"%s\"\n", answer);

In this example, strchr returns the address of the first occurence of
the letter '\n' [the C newline].

*p = '\0'

means to assign a null byte [value zero] to that location. In C all
strings are terminated with a null byte. So in effect this will replace
the first \n with a null.

Tom

Hey Tom,

Thanks for the in depth explanation. I appreciate you taking the time
to do that!