-- card: 26199 from stack: in
-- bmap block id: 0
-- flags: 0000
-- background id: 4755
-- name: 


-- part contents for background part 4
----- text -----
Frequently pointers are used to structure variables.  A special operator '->' is used in place of the dot operator to access members of a structure pointed to by a pointer variable, to avoid cumbersome syntax.  It is important to remember to define a non-pointer variable as well in order to allocate space for the structure itself:

    struct personnel_rec  *person_ptr,
                                             jack;
    person_ptr = &jack;                   /*  if you forget this you may crash the program!  */
    person_ptr->salary = 1.5e6;      /*  same as:  (*person_ptr).salary = 1.5e6  */

The same array-pointer relationship holds as that for the basic data types.

    struct personnel_rec  person[10];
    (person+1)->salary = 1.5e6;      /*  ok since space is allocated in previous line  */

It is illegal to declare a member of a struct to be a variable of the same user-defined type.  For example, a personnel_rec variable may not be a member of the       personnel_rec type, for obvious reasons.  However, it is legal to declare a member to


-- part contents for background part 7
----- text -----
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