The size of any pointer variable is same. ( 2 byte in case of 32 bit machine ).
The type of pointer defines the type of data the pointer is pointing to .
eg. if the pointer is definde as
int *p;
then it will create a pointer p ( of two bytes ) which is pointing to a data of type int ( again of 2 byte ) .
If we create
float *pf;
it will create a pointer ( again of 2 bytes ) but pointing to a float ( of 4 byte ).
The difference makes sense when we try to read or move to the next block etc.
suppose we created a char type pointer to an int then while reading, it will just read the first byte leaving the second byte of int thus giving us wrong output.
Yes pointer size is always that of size of word on a particular architecture.
Actually pointer only contains starting address of a data type, there after how many bytes we have to read (e.g. 1 for char, 2 for int) depends upon type of pointer declared.
