Question

I want to pass a pointer to a variable. Sometimes it would be an integer and sometimes maybe a character. In the example below i pass the pointer p to CreateObject but when i try to retrieve the value of the variable the pointer points to i get an awkward result:

int i =0;
int *p = malloc(sizeof(int));
*p = i;

ObjectP object = CreateObject(p);

Say i want to cast it back to an int and display it:

void CreateObject(void *key)
{
   printf("%d\n", (int)key);
}

I get: 160637064 instead of 0. What am i getting instead of the integer i assigned previously and how do i retrieve it instead of the current value?

Answer 1

This:

(int) key

is not dereferencing the pointer to access the data it points at, it’s re-interpreting the pointer value (the address) itself as the integer.

You need:

printf("%d\n", *(int *) key);