dereference – Page 3

Why does the arrow (->) operator in C exist?

September 28, 2022 by Tarik

I’ll interpret your question as two questions: 1) why -> even exists, and 2) why . does not automatically dereference the pointer. Answers to both questions have historical roots. Why does -> even exist? In one of the very first versions of C language (which I will refer as CRM for “C Reference Manual”, which … Read more

What does “dereferencing” a pointer mean?

September 9, 2022 by Tarik

Reviewing the basic terminology It’s usually good enough – unless you’re programming assembly – to envisage a pointer containing a numeric memory address, with 1 referring to the second byte in the process’s memory, 2 the third, 3 the fourth and so on…. What happened to 0 and the first byte? Well, we’ll get to … Read more