Assuming you're asking about

    int *f; *f = 2;

The statement,

    *f = 2;

says "dereference f to get a location; set the contents of that location to 2". "Set f to the location of 2" would be spelled

    f = &2;

This is partly a matter of the difference between assignment and definition(/equality).

The first of these is invalid C (undefined behavior) because it uses a value (the contents of f) before initialization.

The second is invalid C (compile error) because 2 is not an l-value (that is, it does not have a location).

Edited to add: I will note that I don't think there is any reason

    *f = 2;

couldn't mean to give f the addess of 2, as by analogy to structural pattern matching, but that the syntax is already taken for something else.