Question 1

Any arithmetic operation may be performed on pointers.

Accepted Answer

Arithmetic operations on pointers are limited to addition and subtraction. Multiplication, division, and bitwise operations are not allowed because pointers are memory addresses, and such operations do not make sense in the context of memory addressing.

Question 2

A pointer can be passed as an argument to a function.

Accepted Answer

Pointers can be passed as arguments to functions in C/C++.

Question 3

The expression s->m has the same meaning as (*s).m.

Accepted Answer

This is true because the arrow operator -> is used to access a member of a structure or union through a pointer, while the dot operator . is used to access a member of a structure or union directly. However, the two expressions s->m and (*s).m have the same effect of accessing the member m of the structure pointed to by s.

Question 4

The expression s->m is meaningful only when s is a pointer to a structure and m is a member of the structure.

Accepted Answer

This statement is an accurate description of the use of the arrow (->) operator in C, which is used to access members of a structure through a pointer to that structure.

Question 5

The statement Rectangle * boxPtr; defines a variable boxPtr to be a pointer pointing to a type Rectangle.

Accepted Answer

The statement defines a pointer variable boxPtr of type Rectangle.

Question 6

The ampersand (&)is used to dereference a pointer variable in C++.

Accepted Answer

The ampersand (&) is used to get the address of a variable in C++. To dereference a pointer variable and access the value it points to, the asterisk (*) operator is used.

Question 7

C++ does not perform array bounds checking.

Accepted Answer

C++ does not perform array bounds checking, which means that the program may access and modify elements outside the bounds of an array. This can lead to unexpected behavior and crashes. It is the responsibility of the programmer to ensure that array indices are within the bounds of the array.

Question 8

It is legal to subtract a pointer variable from another pointer variable.

Accepted Answer

It is legal to subtract two pointers in C/C++. The result is the difference between the two addresses in terms of the size of the pointed-to datatype.

Question 9

An array name is a pointer constant because the address it represents cannot be changed during run- time.

Accepted Answer

Array names represent the address of the first element in the array, and this address cannot be changed during runtime. Therefore, array names are pointer constants.

Question 10

Memory cannot be allocated after a program is already running.

Accepted Answer

Memory can be dynamically allocated and deallocated during the runtime of a program using functions like malloc(), calloc(), realloc() in C, or new and delete in C++, or similar mechanisms in other programming languages.

Quiz 10: Pointers