C++ Pointer

                                            C++ Pointer

Pointers are powerful feature of C++ that differentiates it from other programming languages like JAVA and Python.

Pointers are used in  C++ program to access the memory  and manipulate the address.

Address in C++

To understand pointers, you should first know how data is stored on the computer.

Each Variable you create in your program is assigned a location in the computer's memory, the value the variable stores is actually stored in the location assigned.

To know where the data is stored, C++ has an & operator.

The & (reference) operator gives you the address occupied by a variable.

If var is a variable then, & var gives the address of that variable.

Example:  Adress in C++

Output:

Note:   

The 0x in the beginning represents the address is in hexadecimal form.

Notice that first address differs from second by 4- bytes and second address differs from third by 4 -bytes,

This is because the size of integer ( variable of type int) is 4 bytes in 64- bit system.

Pointers Variables

C++ gives you the power to manipulate the data in the computer's memory directly. You can assign and de-assign any space in the memory as you wish, This is done using Pointer variables.

Pointer variable are variables that points to a specific address in the memory pointed by another variable.

How to declare a pointer?

The statement above defines a pointer variable p. It holds the memory address.

The asterisk is a dereference operator which means pointer to.

Here, pointer p is a pointer to int i.e., it is pointing to an integer value in the memory address.