Pointers, still don't know why we use them

[YulRun]

Good day,

So I went and watched a few YouTube videos on pointers, I understand what they do now (I think) it allows you to reference a variables memory address, which you are then able to manipulate or use this data stored there.

I think one advantage of this is instead of having another object pull this information with a method and store it in a separate location you can just use a pointer to reference it within said object for memory management purposes.

Outside of this I’m still quite unaware of why we would use pointers, rather than just referencing the variable itself, which already can link to its own memory address.

Cheers,
Matthew

[Maxim_Inozemtsev]

Hey there
I’ve just answered similar question here:

What I understand about pointers

In this example actually the assignment will no work. If value in your example is int then it should be like this: *count = value; And the result is not ‘point to another variable’s value’, but assign value from ‘value’ to the address where count points’ One of the benefits is copy time. When you pass values of any type by value, that means copy them every time. For example: int square(int nubmer) { return number * number; } int a = 2; int b = square(a); When you call square(a) fu…

Let me know if that helped you, and if you would like to learn more about them