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Home/ Questions/Q 6630425
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Editorial Team
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Editorial Team
Asked: May 25, 20262026-05-25T22:24:08+00:00 2026-05-25T22:24:08+00:00

I think I understand the semantics of pointer arithmetic fairly well, but I only

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I think I understand the semantics of pointer arithmetic fairly well, but I only ever see examples when dealing with arrays. Does it have any other uses that can’t be achieved by less opaque means? I’m sure you could find a way with clever casting to use it to access members of a struct, but I’m not sure why you’d bother. I’m mostly interested in C, but I’ll tag with C++ because the answer probably applies there too.

Edit, based on answers received so far: I know pointers can be used in many non-array contexts. I’m specifically wondering about arithmetic on pointers, e.g. incrementing, taking a difference, etc.

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  1. Editorial Team
    Editorial Team
    2026-05-25T22:24:09+00:00Added an answer on May 25, 2026 at 10:24 pm

    If you follow the language standard to the letter, then pointer arithmetic is only defined when pointing to an array, and not in any other case.

    A pointer may point to any element of an array, or one step past the end of the array.

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