Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Summary

Pointers provide a powerful way to access data by indirection. Every variable has an address, which can be obtained using the address of operator (&). The address can be stored in a pointer.

Pointers are declared by writing the type of object that they point to, followed by the indirection operator (*) and the name of the pointer. Pointers should be initialized to point to an object or to NULL (0). You access the value at the address stored in a pointer by using the indirection operator (*).

To create new objects on the heap, you use the new keyword and assign the address that is returned to a pointer. You free that memory by calling the delete keyword on the pointer. delete frees the memory, but it doesn't destroy the pointer. Therefore, ...