In C++ I Cannot Grasp Pointers and Classes

Question

I\'m fresh out of college and have been working in C++ for some time now. I understand all the basics of C++ and use them, but I\'m having a hard time grasping more advance

Answer 1

In a sense, you can consider "pointers" to be one of the two most fundamental types in software - the other being "values" (or "data") - that exist in a huge block of uniquely-addressable memory locations. Think about it. Objects and structs etc don't really exist in memory, only values and pointers do. In fact, a pointer is a value too....the value of a memory address, which in turn contains another value....and so on.

So, in C/C++, when you declare an "int" (intA), you are defining a 32bit chunk of memory that contains a value - a number. If you then declare an "int pointer" (intB), you are defining a 32bit chunk of memory that contains the address of an int. I can assign the latter to point to the former by stating "intB = &intA", and now the 32bits of memory defined as intB, contains an address corresponding to intA's location in memory.

When you "dereference" the intB pointer, you are looking at the address stored within intB's memory, finding that location, and then looking at the value stored there (a number).

Commonly, I have encountered confusion when people lose track of exactly what it is they're dealing with as they use the "&", "*" and "->" operators - is it an address, a value or what? You just need to keep focused on the fact that memory addresses are simply locations, and that values are the binary information stored there.