How do you use a pointer to a function? Ans. The hardest part about using a pointer-to-function is declaring it. Consider an example. You want to create a pointer, pf, that points to the strcmp() function. The strcmp() function is declared in this way: int strcmp( const char *, const char * ) To set up pf to point to the strcmp() function, you want a declaration that looks just like the strcmp() function's declaration, but that has *pf rather than strcmp: int (*pf)( const char *, const char * ); Notice that you need to put parentheses around *pf. If you don't include parentheses, as in int *pf( const char *, const char * ); /* wrong */ you'll get the same thing as this: (int *) pf( const char *, const char * ); /* wrong */ That is, you'll have a declaration of a function that returns int*. After you've gotten the declaration of pf, you can #include and assign the address of strcmp() to pf: pf = strcmp; or pf = & strcmp; /* redundant & */ You don't need to go indirect on pf to call it: if ( pf( str1, str2 ) > 0 ) /* ... */