Pointers in C++

By
Vikram Uday Kulkarni
MBA (Systems)
 What is Pointer

• What exactly is a pointer

variable?

it's a variable that holds the

address of another variable,
function or data.
 Understanding Memory
Address
• All computers have memory, also
known as RAM. RAM holds the
programs that your computer is
currently running along with the data
they are currently manipulating (their
variables and data structures).
Memory can be thought of simply as
an array of bytes.
 Understanding Memory
Address
• In this array, every memory location
has its own address -- the address of
the first byte is 0, followed by 1, 2, 3,
and so on. Memory addresses act
just like the indexes of a normal
array. The computer can access any
address in memory at any time
(hence the name "random access
memory"). It can also group bytes
together as it needs to form larger
 Understanding Memory
Address
• Example
float f;
• This statement says, "Declare a
location named f that can hold one
floating point value." When the
program runs, the computer reserves
space for the variable f somewhere
in memory. That location has a fixed
address in the memory space, like
Variable
Declaration
 Understanding Memory
Address
• While you think of the variable f, the
computer thinks of a specific address in
memory (for example, 248,440).
Therefore, when you create a statement
like this:
f = 3.14;
• The compiler might translate that into,
"Load the value 3.14 into memory
location 248,440." The computer is
always thinking of memory in terms of
Variable
With Value
 Syntax of Pointer
Declaration
• The * character is used to refer to a
pointer.
int<variable>; // Declare a variable
int *<variable>; // Declare a pointer to above
variable

Example
int a=46;
   int *d=&a;

Here a is a variable and d is pointer

variable
‘*d’ points to the address of variable ‘a’.
 Example
#include <iostream.h>
int main()
{
int I;
int j;
int *p; //a pointer to an integer
cout<<p<<&i;
p = &i;
cout<<p<<&i;
return 0;
}
• This code tells the compiler to print
out the address held in p, along with
the address of i. The variable p starts
off with some crazy value or with 0.
The address of i is generally a large
value. For example, when I ran this
code, I received the following output:

0 2147478276
2147478276 2147478276
WHY is that?