8. Memory access syntax in C

• Because C is a system programming language, it must provide direct access to physical hardware, including memory.

• C supports Assembly language style to access memory. For example,

  
      int MEMORY = 0;               // start at the beginning of memory
  
      int location = 248;           // set location of memory cell #248
  
      MEMORY[ location ] = 65;      // save 65 in memory
  
      int x = MEMORY[ location ];  // assign value from memory to x
  
  

• The above C code uses square brackets to access memory cell #248, counting from the beginning of memory.

• This code would compile just fine on PDP-7.