What is Pointers in C++ ?

• Pointers are symbolic representation of addresses and it enables a program to simulate call-by-reference as well as to create and manipulate dynamic data structures.
• It defines a pointer variable and its general declaration in C/C++ has the format.
• Using unary operator (&) assigning the address of a variable to a pointer which returns the address of that variable.
• Using unary operator (*) accessing the value stored in the address which returns the value of the variable located at the address specified by its operand.
• When we increment a pointer, we increase the pointer by the size of data type to which it points, this is the reason data type to a pointer is knows how many bytes the data is stored inside.

Syntax

datatype *var_name; 
int *ptr;

Sample Code

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
	int  x = 27;  
	int  *ip;        
	ip = &x;       
	cout << "Value of x is : ";
	cout << x << endl;
	cout << "Value of ip is : ";
	cout << ip<< endl;
	cout << "Value of *ip is : ";
	cout << *ip << endl;
	return 0;
}

Output