Pointers and arrays in C - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Pointers and Arrays in C

📖 Scenario: You are working on a simple program that manages a list of temperatures recorded over a week. You want to use pointers to access and print these temperatures from an array.

🎯 Goal: Build a C program that creates an array of temperatures, uses a pointer to access the array elements, and prints each temperature using the pointer.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an integer array called temps with exactly 7 values: 23, 25, 22, 20, 24, 26, 21

Create a pointer variable called ptr that points to the first element of temps

Use a for loop with an integer variable i to iterate from 0 to 6

Inside the loop, use the pointer ptr and the index i to access and print each temperature

Print each temperature on its own line using printf

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Pointers and arrays are used in many programs to efficiently access and manipulate lists of data, such as sensor readings or user inputs.

💼 Career

Understanding pointers and arrays is essential for C programming jobs, especially in systems programming, embedded development, and performance-critical applications.

1

Create the array of temperatures

Create an integer array called temps with these exact values: 23, 25, 22, 20, 24, 26, 21

C

# Create the array temps with 7 temperature values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the syntax int temps[7] = {value1, value2, ..., value7}; to create the array.

2

Create a pointer to the array

Create a pointer variable called ptr that points to the first element of the temps array

C

int temps[7] = {23, 25, 22, 20, 24, 26, 21};
// Create a pointer ptr that points to temps[0]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Set ptr equal to temps to point to the first element.

3

Use a for loop to access array elements via pointer

Use a for loop with an integer variable i from 0 to 6 to access each temperature using the pointer ptr and the index i

C

int temps[7] = {23, 25, 22, 20, 24, 26, 21};
int *ptr = temps;
// Use a for loop with i from 0 to 6 to access temps via ptr
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use *(ptr + i) to get the value at index i via the pointer.

4

Print each temperature using the pointer

Inside the for loop, use printf to print each temperature accessed via *(ptr + i) on its own line

C

int temps[7] = {23, 25, 22, 20, 24, 26, 21};
int *ptr = temps;
for (int i = 0; i < 7; i++) {
    int temp = *(ptr + i);
    // Print temp here
# Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use printf("%d\n", temp); to print each temperature on a new line.