How did you learn pointers?

Hallo,

I am just curious of how you guys learned when/ how to use pointers? I have been programing for a while now, but I am still unsure about the whole pointer thing. Trying to read about has not really helped so far.

I know pointers point to a memory adress, but I dont understand why there is a point in doing so.

How did you learn pointers? Reading, practise or did it just hit you like lightning or something?

thanks

Combination of reading, reading, reading, and practice, practice, practice.

Diagrams help when dealing with pointers.

This one is pretty good - http://pw1.netcom.com/~tjensen/ptr/pointers.htm

I learnt C++ quite recently and indeed pointers didn't seem useful for anything at first. The first example was the swap function - modifying two values in a function. Pointers were demonstrated and then it was immediately suggested to use references instead, as they are clearer.

So just learn how you declare and initialize them and how you dereference them for the time being. When you get to the topics where they are absolutely necessary (e.g memory allocations, polymorphism), you'll see their use. And when you need pointers, you may need to refresh your memory how to use them. So, I'd say, as anything, understanding comes with practice.

C does not have references, so everything that wasn't passed by value to a function was passed by pointer addresses. It took me ages to get the hang of them, but like mentioned above, it takes practice. Every new thing seems diificult at first as it is new to you. I did personally find allocating memory in C++ much easier than C, as I foind new and delete much eaiser to use than malloc(). But that was just me. Everyone learns differently.

hello world!!!

Three important words:
BINARY...SEARCH...TREE.

Thanks for your replies.

I am not super lost, as I do know how to create dynamic arrays and a few other things (basicly thanks to some members at the forum here), but overall I dont feel that I know where and when to use pointers.

For example, I have this function which compiles, but that crashes my program. I think it has something with pointers, but not sure.

Code:

---

// Add diffuse lighting
currentColor = addDiffuse(closestPrimitive, currentRay, interPoint, thisScene);

---

I dont want to turn this thread into how to solve the above, just one question. Non of the variables I am pasing are pointers, but is it possible that they need to be past as pointers anyway?

Quote:

---

hello world!!!

---

???

Quote:

---

This one is pretty good - http://pw1.netcom.com/~tjensen/ptr/pointers.htm

---

Thanks

If you want the function to change the value of the variable passed, you can pass the address of the variable to the function, as long as you tell the compiler in the function prototype that it expects an address to be passed.

Code:

---

void convert ( int* ); // expects pointer

int main()
{
  int num = 5;

  cout << "Value is: " << num << endl;

  // pass address of variable
  convert ( &num );

  cout << "\nNew values is: " << num << endl;

  return 0;
}

void convert ( int *Ptr )
{
  *Ptr = *Ptr * *Ptr;
}

---

Just to show how to pass a pointer to a function. Without code it is hard to know what you mean

I learned mostly from how iterators abstract primitive pointers.