Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition

12.4. Working with Pointer Types

And now, the final topic of the chapter, which most likely will be the least-used of all C# features for the vast majority of your .NET projects. In Chapter 4, you learned that the .NET platform defines two major categories of data: value types and reference types. Truth be told, however, there is a third category: pointer types. To work with pointer types, we get specific operators and keywords that allow us to bypass the CLR's memory-management scheme and take matters into our own hands (see Table 12-3).

Table 12.3. Pointer-Centric C# Operators and Keywords

Operator/Keyword	Meaning in Life
*	This operator is used to create a pointer variable (i.e., a variable that represents a direct location in memory). As in ...