Pointers

[Philip]

I have worked through a "old" pc-tutorial for programming in c.I'm good at
programming in VB and want to know C/C++ as well as I know VB. I've got one
hickup though.To me this tutorial did not explain pointers to me.E.g. I still
get confused where to on how to use them correctly. Is there an easier way
to learn these priciples? And when do I use the adress of an array/variable
"&variable" instead of it self?

[jonnin]

Memory is an array of bytes on most machiines. A pointer is a large integer
variable that contains a number. That number is the index into the array
of memory where your real data is. It can be any data type, or an array,
or a struct/class.

& variable gets the index in memory of a variable. Usually used to get a
pointer to that variable or to send a normal variable to a procedure that
wants a pointer.

* jumps to the location in the pointer to get the data.

-> is for structures and classes to get data out of member pointers.

if you have a pointer to an array, you can use [] to jump in as C stores
them the same way as arrays. A way to think of this is an array name is a
pointer, and a pointer to an array is therefore the same thing.




"Philip" <pcoetzee@cps.altron.co.za> wrote:
>
>I have worked through a "old" pc-tutorial for programming in c.I'm good
at
>programming in VB and want to know C/C++ as well as I know VB. I've got
one
>hickup though.To me this tutorial did not explain pointers to me.E.g. I
still
>get confused where to on how to use them correctly. Is there an easier way
>to learn these priciples? And when do I use the adress of an array/variable
>"&variable" instead of it self?