Printing the Value of a Pointer to an Object

To print the value of a pointer to an object (as opposed to a function pointer) use the p conversion specifier. It is defined to print void-pointers only, so to print out the value of a non void-pointer it needs to be explicitly converted (“casted*”) to void*.

#include <stdlib.h> /* for EXIT_SUCCESS */
#include <stdio.h>  /* for printf() */

int main(void)
{
  int i;
  int * p = &i;

  printf("The address of i is %p.\n", (void*) p);

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Using <inttypes.h> and uintptr_t

Another way to print pointers in C99 or later uses the uintptr_t type and the macros from <inttypes.h>:

#include <inttypes.h> /* for uintptr_t and PRIXPTR */
#include <stdio.h>    /* for printf() */

int main(void)
{
  int  i;
  int *p = &i;

  printf("The address of i is 0x%" PRIXPTR ".\n", (uintptr_t)p);

  return 0;
}

In theory, there might not be an integer type that can hold any pointer converted to an integer (so the type uintptr_t might not exist). In practice, it does exist. Pointers to functions need not be convertible to the uintptr_t type — though again they most often are convertible.

If the uintptr_t type exists, so does the intptr_t type. It is not clear why you’d ever want to treat addresses as signed integers, though.

Pre-Standard History:

Prior to C89 during K&R-C times there was no type void* (nor header <stdlib.h>, nor prototypes, and hence no int main(void) notation), so the pointer was cast to long unsigned int and printed using the lx length modifier/conversion specifier.

The example below is just for informational purpose. Nowadays this is invalid code, which very well might provoke the infamous Undefined Behaviour.

#include <stdio.h> /* optional in pre-standard C - for printf() */

int main()
{
  int  i;
  int *p = &i;

  printf("The address of i is 0x%lx.\n", (long unsigned) p);

  return 0;
}