[Solved] why pointer variable with asterisk and without asterisk behave differently in printf?

When you declare char string[]="Hello" you declare an array of characters.

string points to the first element of the array. * is known as the dereferencing operator.

Suppose ptr is an integer pointer. *ptr will give you the content of the memory location pointed by the pointer ptr. At the time of declaration you have to declare it as int *ptr so that the compiler knows that ptr is a pointer variable(hence the asterix there).

when you execute printf("first character is %c", *my_pointer); the function expects a character corresponding to %c. The declaration char *string and char string[] are roughly(not completely) equivalent. my_pointer is a character type pointer. *my_pointer dereferences my_pointer. In other words *my_pointer gives you the content of my_pointerie the first character in your string.

However a %s expects a string (a character array, which is basically a char pointer) as the corresponding argument in printf. *my_pointer is a character. my_pointer can be treated as a string. Also print will treat the argument as a string and print the who;e thing till \0.

my_pointer=array_of_words “assigns” the value of array_of_words to my_pointer.

array_of_words[] is an array, so the value of array_of_words is basically the memory address of the first element of the array(notice the absence of []). In effect my_pointer now points to the first element of the array.

Hope this explains it.