The C++Course provides a general introduction to programming in C++. It is based on A.B. Downey's book, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. Click here for details.


What are Pointers and References?

Pointers and references are essentially variables that hold memory addresses as their values. You learned before about the various different data types such as: int, double, and char. Pointers and references hold the addresses in memory of where you find the data of the various data types that you have declared and assigned. The two mechanisms, pointers and references, have different syntax and different traditional uses.


Last Update: 2005-12-05