Advantages and disadvantages of pointers in c

Benefits(use) of pointers in c:

• Pointers provide direct access to memory
• Pointers provide a way to return more than one value to the functions
• Reduces the storage space and complexity of the program
• Reduces the execution time of the program
• Provides an alternate way to access array elements
• Pointers can be used to pass information back and forth between the calling function and called function.
• Pointers allows us to perform dynamic memory allocation and deallocation.
• Pointers helps us to build complex data structures like linked list, stack, queues, trees, graphs etc.
• Pointers allows us to resize the dynamically allocated memory block.
• Addresses of objects can be extracted using pointers

Drawbacks of pointers in c:

• Uninitialized pointers might cause segmentation fault.
• Dynamically allocated block needs to be freed explicitly.  Otherwise, it would lead to memory leak.
• Pointers are slower than normal variables.
• If pointers are updated with incorrect values, it might lead to memory corruption.

Basically, pointer bugs are difficult to debug.  Its programmers responsibility to use pointers effectively and correctly.