Editing C syntax (section)

====Accessing members====
Members are accessed using the name of the instance of a structure or union, a period ({{code|.}}), and the name of the member. For example, given the declaration of ''tee'' from above, the member known as ''y'' (of type {{code|float}}) can be accessed using the following syntax:

<syntaxhighlight lang=C>tee.y</syntaxhighlight>

Structures are commonly accessed through pointers. Consider the following example that defines a pointer to ''tee'', known as ''ptr_to_tee'':

<syntaxhighlight lang=C>struct s *ptr_to_tee = &tee;</syntaxhighlight>

Member ''y'' of ''tee'' can then be accessed by dereferencing ''ptr_to_tee'' and using the result as the left operand:

<syntaxhighlight lang=C>(*ptr_to_tee).y</syntaxhighlight>

Which is identical to the simpler {{code|tee.y}} above as long as ''ptr_to_tee'' points to ''tee''. Due to [[Operators in C and C++#Operator precedence|operator precedence]] ("." being higher than "*"), the shorter <code>*ptr_to_tee.y</code> is incorrect for this purpose, instead being parsed as <code>*(ptr_to_tee.y)</code> and thus the parentheses are necessary. Because this operation is common, C provides an [[syntactic sugar|abbreviated syntax]] for accessing a member directly from a pointer. With this syntax, the name of the instance is replaced with the name of the pointer and the period is replaced with the character sequence {{code|->}}. Thus, the following method of accessing ''y'' is identical to the previous two:

<syntaxhighlight lang=C>ptr_to_tee->y</syntaxhighlight>

Members of unions are accessed in the same way.

This can be chained; for example, in a linked list, one may refer to <code>n->next->next</code> for the second following node (assuming that <code>n->next</code> is not null).