Create Pointers

Pointers are objects that store the memory address of another object (or nullptr). They enable indirect access and are essential for dynamic memory, polymorphism, and interfacing with low-level APIs.

Key characteristics:

Use * in the declarator to declare a pointer; use & (address-of) to take a variable's address. Place the * next to the identifier to avoid confusion.

Be careful when declaring multiple variables in one statement: only the names with * are pointers.

Pointers can be initialized with the addresses of variables or arrays. When printing a char* address, cast to const void* to avoid it being treated as a C-string.

Use *ptr to read/write the value, and -> to access members through a pointer to an object.

Pointer arithmetic advances by element size. Incrementing an int* moves by sizeof(int) bytes.

Always initialize pointers. A dangling pointer points to an object that no longer exists (e.g., after delete or the end of a variable's lifetime).

For a given target and ABI, all object pointers typically have the same size (e.g., 4 bytes on many 32-bit platforms, 8 bytes on many 64-bit platforms). Exact sizes are implementation-defined and may differ on embedded systems; function-pointer size can also differ.