this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
16 points (100.0% liked)

C++

1718 readers
7 users here now

The center for all discussion and news regarding C++.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
16
Why use pointers? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hey all, teaching myself CPP through a few books (and a little bit of CS in general through CS50) and hit a road block.

I understand what pointers are, and understand they’re a big part of programming. My question is why?

What do you use pointers for? Why is forwarding to a new memory address preferable to just changing the variable/replacing what’s already at the memory address or at a new one? Is it because new data could exceed the size of that address already allocated?

Thanks in advance!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't used pointers for a long time, I only use smart pointers nowadays. As for your question: just changing the variable/replacing what’s already at the memory address, the answer is also "sometimes you can't" because some objects cannot be cloned or duplicated like sockets or threads.