Interestingly, I assume you meant to end your post with "pointer to char" not "char" itself, but asterix is the the italics formatting character on HN so it's i

Interestingly, I assume you meant to end your post with "pointer to char" not "char" itself, but asterix is the the italics formatting character on HN so it's italicized it. But the funny thing is that it's italicized the "reply" button (as well as an empty i-tag after "char").