Question

I got this from a site which was explaining sorting. But i could not understand *(int*)x. How to read the variable x when used like this in C program? Is it pointer to pointer of x or is it different? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can get there if you split it up, first:

(int*)x

This casts x to an int*, pointer to an int. I assume in this case, x is an int, so the number in x gets interpreted as a pointer.

In the next step:

*(int*)x

* dereferences a pointer, in this case the just casted int. The result is an int.

In short: Interpret an int as a pointer and get the value it points to.