C Swap Function Explained: Purpose & Implementation

The swap function in C language is used to exchange the values of two variables. It swaps the values of two variables without using an additional variable.

Here is an example of a swap function implementation:

void swap(int* a, int* b) {
  int temp = *a;
  *a = *b;
  *b = temp;
}

When calling this function, two variable addresses need to be passed in, allowing the values of the variables to be manipulated through pointers. Inside the function, a temporary variable “temp” is used to store the value of one of the variables, and then the values of the two variables are swapped so that the value of variable a becomes the value of variable b and the value of variable b becomes the value of variable a.

The swap function can easily exchange the values of two variables, often used in sorting algorithms, algorithm problems, and other scenarios.