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Showing content from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/c/pointer-vs-array-in-c/ below:

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

Most of the time, pointer and array accesses can be treated as acting the same, the major exceptions being:

1. the sizeof operator

sizeof(array) returns the amount of memory used by all elements in the array
sizeof(pointer) only returns the amount of memory used by the pointer variable itself

2. the & operator

array is an alias for &array[0] and returns the address of the first element in the array
&pointer returns the address of the pointer

3. a string literal initialization of a character array

char array[] = “abc” sets the first four elements in array to ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, and ‘\0’
char *pointer = “abc” sets the pointer to the address of the “abc” string (which may be stored in read-only memory and thus unchangeable)

4. Pointer variable can be assigned a value whereas an array variable cannot be.

int a[10];
int *p; 
p=a; /*legal*/
a=p; /*illegal*/

5. Arithmetic on pointer variable is allowed.

p++; /*Legal*/
a++; /*illegal*/

6. Array is a collection of similar data types while the pointer variable stores the address of another variable.

Please refer Difference between pointer and array for more details.

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