The -> operator, which is applied exclusively to pointers, is needed to obtain the specified field or method of the object referenced by the pointer. (this applies also to structs just for their fields)
If you have a variable ptr declared as a pointer you can think of it as (*ptr).field.
A side node that I add just to make pedantic people happy: AS ALMOST EVERY OPERATOR you can define a different semantic of the operator by overloading it for your classes.
