* sign in C

[gautamz07]

Why is * sign used in C language ?

[Nepomuk]

Well, I guess Dennis Ritchie needed a sign and thought "The asterisk would look nice there." ;-)

I'm guessing however that your actual question is: "For what is the asterisk used?" And there are two answers I can give:

1. For multiplications, e.g.

   int a = 7 * 9;

2. For loads of things related to pointers, such as

   int   c, d;
    int   *pj;
    struct MyStruct astruct;
    struct MyStruct *bb;
    
    c   = 10;
    pj  = &c;             /* pj points to c */
    d   = *pj;            /* d is assigned the value to which pj points, 10 */
    pj  = &d;             /* now points to d */
    *pj = 12;             /* d is now 12 */
    
    bb = &astruct;
    (*bb).m_aNumber = 3;  /* assigns 3 to the m_aNumber member of astruct */
    bb->num2 = 44.3;      /* assigns 44.3 to the num2 member of astruct   */
    *pj = bb->m_aNumber;  /* eqivalent to d = astruct.m_aNumber;          */

   (Copied from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Progr...ers_and_arrays)

If you want to learn about pointers, reading the article I took that example from is a good starting point.