Question

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Why does C have a distinction between -> and . ?

Lets say that I have this structure:

struct movies
{
    string title;
    int year;
} my_movie, *ptrMovie;

Now I access my_movie like this: my_movie.year = 1999;
Now to access a pointer I must do this: ptrMovie->year = 1999;

Why do pointers use the -> operator and normal data types use the . operator? Is there any reason they couldn’t both use the . operator?

Answer 1

The . operator accesses a member of a structure and can operate only on structure variables.
If you want to do this to a pointer, you first need to dereference the pointer (using *) and then access the member (using .). Something like

(*ptrMovie).year = 1999

The -> operator is a shorthand for this.