The "Address Of" Operator

Although declaring pointers and references look similar, assigning them is a whole different story. In C++, there is another operator that you'll get to know intimately, the "address of" operator, which is denoted by the ampersand & symbol. The "address of" operator does exactly what it says, it returns the "address of" a variable, a symbolic constant, or a element in an array, in the form of a pointer of the corresponding type. To use the "address of" operator, you tack it on in front of the variable that you wish to have the address of returned.

Now, do not confuse the "address of" operator with the declaration of a reference. Because use of operators is restricted to rvalues, or to the right hand side of the equation, the compiler knows that &SOMETYPE is the "address of" operator being used to denote the return of the address of SOMETYPE as a pointer.

Furthermore, if you have a function which has a pointer as an argument, you may use the "address of" operator on a variable to which you have not already set a pointer to point. By doing this, you do not necessarily have to declare a pointer just so that it is used as an argument in a function, the "address of" operator returns a pointer and thus can be used in that case too.