Pointers in C

Objective

In this challenge, you will learn to implement the basic functionalities of pointers in C. A pointer in C is a way to share a memory address among different contexts (primarily functions). They are primarily used whenever a function needs to modify the content of a variable that it does not own.

In order to access the memory address of a variable, val, prepend it with & sign. For example, &val returns the memory address of val.

This memory address is assigned to a pointer and can be shared among various functions. For example,  will assign the memory address of  to pointer . To access the content of the memory to which the pointer points, prepend it with a *. For example, *p will return the value reflected by  and any modification to it will be reflected at the source ().

	void increment(int *v) {
(*v)++;
}
int main() {
int a;
scanf("%d", &a);
increment(&a);
printf("%d", a);
return 0;
}

Task

Complete the function void update(int *a,int *b). It receives two integer pointers, int* a and int* b. Set the value of  to their sum, and  to their absolute difference. There is no return value, and no return statement is needed.

  • a’ = a + b
  • b’ = |a – b|

Input Format

The input will contain two integers,  and , separated by a newline.

Output Format

Modify the two values in place and the code stub main() will print their values.

Note: Input/ouput will be automatically handled. You only have to complete the function described in the ‘task’ section.

Sample Input

4
5

Sample Output

9
1

Explanation

  • a’ = 4 + 5 = 9
  • b’ = |4 -5| = 1

Solution Implementation


#include <stdio.h>
void update(int *a,int *b) {
    // Complete this function 
    *a=*a+*b;
    *b=abs(*a-(2**b));   
}

int main() {
    int a, b;
    int *pa = &a, *pb = &b;
    
    scanf("%d %d", &a, &b);
    update(pa, pb);
    printf("%d\n%d", a, b);

    return 0;
}
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