Question

So, in this guide I read that saying

char * terry;

was different from saying

char* terry; //or
char *terry; // FYI: I understand what these two do.

as stated by

“I want to emphasize that the asterisk sign (*) that we use when
declaring a pointer only means that it is a pointer (it is part of its
type compound specifier), and should not be confused with the
dereference operator that we have seen a bit earlier, but which is
also written with an asterisk (*). They are simply two different
things represented with the same sign.”

However I do not understand why. Perhaps I took the quote the wrong way, now that I have read it once again, but I am still confused. Can anyone tell me if this is wrong or right and why?

Thank you.

Answer 1

No, all three are exactly the same as far as the parser is concerned. People certainly have their reasons for using each style, but there’s not really a “right” way. As an editorial note, I prefer:

char *terry;

What the author of your link is describing is that the * in the declaration is somehow different from the unary * operator used to dereference a pointer:

char *terry = "abcdefg"; // declaration & initialization
*terry = 'x';            // dereference

This potential funny business is actually one of the reasons I prefer the notation I mentioned above – it makes both cases look the same, so there’s no room for confusion.