Yashavant kanetkar understanding pointer in C, Chepter 1, Question 5.

Question

(5) Would the following program give a compilation error or warning?

main()
{
float i = 10, *j;
void *k;
k=&i;
j= k;
printf("\n%f", *j);
}

 

Comments

This program will compile and run in C compiler but it will give compiler error with C++ compiler in line no 6( j=k )

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@SuvasishDutta

isit because of return type?

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Yes because of void pointer. Void pointer is a pointer that has no associated data type with it.
1. Assigning content of pointer of any type to a void pointer will work fine in all compilers.
2. Assigning content of a void pointer to a pointer of any type will produce error in some compilers e.g. in c++. It is compiler dependent.
In the question, there is an invalid conversion from 'void *' to 'float *'. It doesn't happen implicitly.
We have to typecast the void pointer with the data type to which content of void pointer is assigned.
Here, to make the code to run fine in all compilers, we have to write : j= (float *)k in place of j=k.

Answer 1

It will give compilation error as void is not any data type.