this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Why use pointers? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by lenninscjay@lemm.ee to c/cpp@programming.dev
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Hey all, teaching myself CPP through a few books (and a little bit of CS in general through CS50) and hit a road block.

I understand what pointers are, and understand they’re a big part of programming. My question is why?

What do you use pointers for? Why is forwarding to a new memory address preferable to just changing the variable/replacing what’s already at the memory address or at a new one? Is it because new data could exceed the size of that address already allocated?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't used pointers for a long time, I only use smart pointers nowadays. As for your question: just changing the variable/replacing what’s already at the memory address, the answer is also "sometimes you can't" because some objects cannot be cloned or duplicated like sockets or threads.