Why does C use the asterisk for pointers?

Simply – because B did.

Because memory is a linear array, it is possible to interpret the value in a cell as an index in this array, and BCPL supplies an operator for this purpose. In the original language it was spelled rv, and later !, while B uses the unary *. Thus, if p is a cell containing the index of (or address of), or pointer to) another cell, *p refers to the contents of the pointed-to cell, either as a value in an expression or as the target of an assignment.

^{From The Development of the C Language}

Thats it. At this point, the question is as uninteresting as “why does python 3 use . to call a method? Why not ->?” Well… because Python 2 uses . to call a method.

Rarely does a language exist from nothing. It has influences and is based on something that came before.

So, why didn’t B use ! for derefrencing a pointer like its predecessor BCPL did?

Well, BCPL was a bit wordy. Instead of && or || BCPL used logand and logor. This was because most keyboards din’t have ∧ or ∨ keys and not equal was actually the word NEQV (see The BCPL Reference Manual).

B appears to have been partially inspired to tighten up the syntax rather than have long words for all these logical operators that programmers did fairly frequently. And thus ! for dereference became * so that ! could be used for logical negation. Note there’s a difference between the unary * operator and the binary * operator (multiplication).

Well, what about other options, like ->?

The -> was taken for syntactic sugar around field derefrences struct_pointer->field which is (*struct_pointer).field

Other options like <- could create ambiguous parsings. For example:

 foo <- bar

Is that to be read as:

(foo) <- (bar)

or

(foo) < (-bar)

Making a unary operator that is composed of a binary operator and another unary operator is quite likely to have problems as the second unary operator may be a prefix for another expression.

Furthermore, it is again important to try to keep the things being typed frequently to a minimum. I would hate to have to write:

int main(int argc, char->-> argv, char->-> envp)

This also becomes difficult to read.

Other characters might have been possible (the @ wasn’t used until Objective C appropriated it). Though again, this goes to the core of ‘C uses * because B did’. Why didn’t B use @? Well, B didn’t use all the characters. There was no bpp program (compare cpp) and other characters were available in B (such as # which was later used by cpp).

If I may hazard a guess as to why – its because of where the keys are. From a manual on B:

To facilitate manipulation of addresses when it seems advisable, B provides two unary address operators, * and &. & is the address operator so &x is the address of x, assuming it has one. * is the indirection operator; *x means “use the content of x as an address.”

Note that & is shift-7 and * is shift-8. Their proximity to each other may have been a hint to the programmer as to what they do… but that’s only a guess. One would have to ask Ken Thompson about why that choice was made.

So, there you have it. C is that way because B was. B is that way because it wanted to change from how BCPL was.

I was asked by a student if & and * were chosen because they were next to each other on the keyboard (something I had never noticed before). Much googling led me to B and BCPL documentation, and this thread. However, I couldn’t find much at all. It seemed like there were lots of reasons for * in B, but I couldn’t find anything for &.

So following @MichaelT’s suggestion, I asked Ken Thompson:

From: Ken Thompson < [email protected] >

near on the keyboard: no.
c copied from b so & and * are same there.
b got * from earlier languages – some assembly,
bcpl and i think pl/1.
i think that i used & because the name (ampersand)
sounds like “address.” b was designed to be run with
a teletype model 33 teletype. (5 bit baud-o code)
so the use of symbols was restricted.