Thread: Problems

Im confused a little bit on pointers and reference. Can somebody explain step by step what they are and what they are used for?
Thanks

pointer = (*) a memory address.

reference = (&) a memory address (but it looks like the variable itself)

The following code changes the same variable to 0 and then to 1 in the function.

Code:

void func(int *ptr, int & ref)
   {
   *ptr = 0;
   ref = 1;
   }

int main( void )
   {
   int test;
   func(&test, test);
   return 0;
   }

Lol. I know the code to use them. But I want to know the purpose of them etc

well, I thought it seemed like an odd question. You had posted similar things in the past. ok...

You usually won't just have a pointer to an int as in the example. A lot of times it'll be a pointer to a struct or class. If you didn't do a pointer and you just passed it in, you couldn't modify it for one, and also you would be making a copy of it. In some cases this can be very painful.

Also, you may be using a variable in the middle of a large buffer. You can just find the place in the buffer with a pointer and then use that small part of the buffer to pass in.

I guess if this is not what you're looking for then I'm not sure what you're asking.

if you're not sure why there is a difference between reference and pointer then I would say that reference is just a new convenience added for C++. It's kinda the same thing.

Yea.. first of all... what IS a pointer and what is it USED for?

hmm.... are you being serious? it's kinda hard to tell.

if memory is a huge block of 0's and 1's and you have some chunk of it you want to use, there will be an offset from the beginning of that huge block. This is called the address. From this address you can read, change etc... the memory. Variables are nothing more than pieces of this block and pointers are nothing more than the address in the block.

Ok. What are pointers used for?? Is it just to read memory??

well yeah, kind of a guarantee that you're talking about the exact same chunk of memory.

Why do programs use it??

???

they use it so they can access a chunk of memory!

You want an example or something? how bout this..... A binary tree has node of this type:

Code:

class Tnode
   {
   public:
      Tnode *left;
      Tnode *right;
   };

non pointer data and functions are left out.
the pointers are pointing to the same type node. when you are building the tree, you would not know how big and where the branches should be so they need to be created at runtime. Then you fill in the nodes:

Code:

node->left = new Tnode;

Like that. That's just one example. There are tons of reasons to use pointers. How 'bout across dll's? if you have a dll that you want to pass some large structure into you would probably want to pass a pointer:

Code:

DLLFunction(&mystruct);

What's a binary tree?

That's good! Keep them coming