Well, rarely you will have to find an address of a variable in C#.NET. Though C#.NET allows use of pointers but anyone hardly use them. .NET base library and Compiler have done a beautiful job, abstracting the complex use of pointers, exposing ref, out keywords.
But what if you still want to playaround?
[I must warn you about this. Don’t dare to play with Pointers 🙂 Improper handling of pointers can even bring your application down]
Thankfully, there are constructs which do help in achieving what we want.
- We’ll make use of the following:
-
Pointers can only be used in unsafe contexts in .NET.
- * operator
- Stack knowledge
The above link is just to get a concept of Stack. What a stack is. It has nothing to do with Stack class provided in C#.NET.
static void GetAddress()
{
unsafe
{
int i = 5;
object refer = new object();
// &i gets an address of variable 'i' and * operator gets the value
Console.WriteLine("Address of i:{0},{1}" , (uint)&i, *(&i));
Console.WriteLine("Address of refer:{0},{1}", (uint)(&i - 1), *(&i - 1));
}
}
Explanation
Here, i have defined two variables, named – i and refer . Both these variables sit on STACK, however the values stored by them are treated differently.
i stores the value directly [5 in our case as per statement], and
refer stores the address of an actual object allocated on a manged heap.
This is how Stack and Heap state would be after two initalizing statements.
So, if i have an access to an address of i and knowing that refer is on Stack just after i, decrementing 1 from i address [Pointer arithmetic], i’m now pointing to the refer which is the reference to the actual object (object()) sitting on heap.
You have a stack address and thus the value stored at that location. Using Pointer Arithmatic, do what you want WITH CARE.
MS should tag POINTERS with “HANDLE WITH UTMOST CARE” 🙂
Sharing ideas, Sharing experiences 
It’s not quite accurate to say that & get the address of ‘i’ and * gets the value (of ‘i’ ?).
While I can write &i, *i is invalid, because ‘i’ is not a pointer. The value of ‘i’ is just i.
Writing *(&i) is redundant. *(&i) == i.
It would have been less confusing to say that the * operator gets the value at a given address in memory, hence *(&i). * only works with addresses and pointers. Pointers only stores addresses.
So if ‘i’ was a pointer I could write *i and get the value pointed by ‘i’, not the value of ‘i’. The value stored in ‘i’ would be an address in memory, and to get that value I would just write i.
int x;
int* i = &x;
*i = 123; // initialize x
Console.WriteLine(“Value of i is address of x? “, i == &x) // true
Console.WriteLine(“Value of i: {0}”, (uint)i);
Console.WriteLine(“Address of x: {0}”, &x);
It could sound picky but when dealing with pointers, things should be said without any ambiguities.
Anyway nice try for presenting pointers without overcomplicating the subject.
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Hi bro…..Nice post and i am having a doubt………Are we sure that all the time “refer” sits next to “i” on the stack…..I mean if we are executing 2 or more threads……
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Hi Pavan,
Yes, always. Both variables are defined locally in the same scope and one after another. That is the reason.
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