Two different operators are used to access the members of a structure. Use the structure-member operator (.) to access a structure member directly, and the pointer-member operator (–>) to access a structure member indirectly through a pointer.
For instance, you may create a pointer to a structure of the employee type,
struct employee *p_ptr;
and initialize the pointer to point to the jones structure:
p_ptr = &jones;
If you use the structure-member operator to access a structure member through the pointer,
p_ptr.months = 78; /* Error! */
QuickC issues this error message:
C2040: '.' requires struct/union name
Use the pointer-member operator to access a structure member through a pointer:
p_ptr->months = 78;