Determining the data type of a variable using pointers in C

How do you determine the data type of a variable using only pointers?
I mean, if you have 3 variables say:

int x
float y
char z

How do you determine the data type of these variables by accessing them using pointers?

Comments

  • Pointers have types associated with them:
    int* px;
    float* py;
    char* pz;

    If it's a void pointer, then it's not known which type it points to:
    void* pv;

    It's possible to analyse the variables by accessing them, but the methods you would use to do this depend on the specific problem.
  • I got your point, but the question is, if I have 3 variables x, y and z, then how do I determine what data type they are of using pointers(no built-in functions)? Again, I assume I do not know what data type they are. How do I go about solving this?

    An approach that I thought was, to use memory addressing(&), but I am not able to put it to use to solve this.
  • [color=Blue]Just with a void* not possible. Only possible, if you create the structure for each variable and enclose the type inside it. But that would be completely different programming. Lots of overhead and unreadable.[/color]
    [code]
    enum VarTypes
    {
    INTEGER = 1,
    FLOAT,
    DOUBLE,
    CHAR
    };

    typedef struct
    {
    void* DataPtr;
    int SizeInBytes;
    int Type; // Values from VarTypes set
    }
    MYVAR;

    int a = 9;
    float b = 763.34f;
    double c = 6327.9988737;
    char s = 'A';

    MYVAR var1 = { &a, sizeof (a), INTEGER };
    MYVAR var2 = { &b, sizeof (b), FLOAT };
    MYVAR var3 = { &c, sizeof (c), DOUBLE };
    MYVAR var4 = { &s, sizeof (s), CHAR };
    [/code]
    [color=Blue]Now, you must pass var1...4 to every function to deal with variables. In short: BAD IDEA![/color]
  • Thanks for the info. It was helpful.
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