THINK++ — Engineering Visualized

The Address Operator

Pointer Basics

To work with pointers, you need two special operators: the Address-of operator & and the Dereference operator *.

ADDRESS-OF (&)

int* ptr = &x;

Gets the memory address where variable x is stored.

DEREFERENCE (*)

int value = *ptr;

Gets the value stored at the address pointed to by ptr.

Full Example

int x = 10;
int* ptr = &x;     // ptr stores address of x

cout << ptr;      // Output: 0x7ff... (Address)
cout << *ptr;     // Output: 10 (Value at address)

*ptr = 20;        // Changes x to 20 indirectly!

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