Chapter two
2. Pointers in C++
2. Introduction
We have already seen how variables are memory cells that we can access by an identifier.
But these variables are stored in concrete places of the computer memory. For our
programs, the computer memory is only a succession of 1 byte cells (the minimum size for
a datum), each one with a unique address.
A pointer is a variable which stores the address of another variable. The only difference
between pointer variable and regular variable is the data they hold.
There are two pointer operators in C++:
& the address of operator
the dereference operator
Whenever you see the & used with pointers, think of the words “address of” The &
operator always produces the memory address of whatever it precedes. The * operator,
when used with pointers, either declares a pointer or dereferences the pointer’s value. The
dereference operator can be literally translated to "value pointed by".
A pointer is simply the address of an object in memory. Generally, objects can be
accessed in two ways: directly by their symbolic name, or indirectly through a pointer. The
act of getting to an object via a pointer to it, is called dereferencing the pointer. Pointer
variables are defined to point to objects of a specific type so that when the pointer is
dereferenced, a typed object is obtained.
At the moment in which we declare a variable this one must be stored in a concrete
location in this succession of cells (the memory). We generally do not decide where the
variable is to be placed - fortunately that is something automatically done by the compiler
and the operating system on runtime, but once the operating system has assigned an
address there are some cases in which we may be interested in knowing where the variable
is stored.
This can be done by preceding the variable identifier by an ampersand sign (&), which
literally means, "address of”. For example:
ptr= &var;
This would assign to variable ptr the address of variable var, since when preceding the
name of the variable var with the ampersand ( & ) character we are no longer talking
about the content of the variable, but about its address in memory.
We are going to suppose that var has been placed in the memory address 1776 and that we
write the following:
var=25;
x=var; ptr = &var;
The result will be the one shown in the following diagram:
We have assigned to x the content of variable var as we have done in many other occasions in
previous sections, but to ptr we have assigned the address in memory where the operating
system stores the value of var , that we have imagined that it was 1776 (it can be any address).
The reason is that in the allocation of ptr we have preceded var with an ampersand ( & )
character.
The variable that stores the address of another variable (like ptr in the previous example) is what
we call a pointer.
2.1. Declaring Pointers:
Is reserving a memory location for a pointer variable in the heap. Syntax:
type * pointer_name ;
to declare a pointer variable called p_age, do the following:
int * p_age;
Whenever the dereference operator, *, appears in a variable declaration, the variable being
declared is always a pointer variable.
2.2. Assigning values to pointers:
p_age is an integer pointer. The type of a pointer is very important. p_age can point only
to integer values, never to floating-point or other types.
To assign p_age the address of a variable, do the following: int age = 26;
int * p_age;
p_age = &age;
OR
int age = 26;
int * p_age = & age;
Both ways are possible.
If you wanted to print the value of age, do the following
cout<<age;//prints the value of age
Or by using pointers you can do it as follows
cout<<*p_age;//dereferences p_age;
The dereference operator produces a value that tells the pointer where to point. Without the
*, (i.e cout<<p_age), a cout statement would print an address (the address of age). With
the *, the cout prints the value at that address.
You can assign a different value to age with the following statement:
age = 13; //assigns a new value to variable age
*p_age = 13 //assigns 13 as a value to the memory p_age points at.
N.B: the * appears before a pointer variable in only two places: when you declare a pointer
variable and when you dereference a pointer variable (to find the data it points to).
- The following program is one you should study closely. It shows more about
pointers and the pointer operators, & and *, than several pages of text could do.
- #...
- #...
- void main()
- {
- int num = 123; // a regular integer variable
- int *p_num; //declares an integer pointer
- cout<< “num is ”<<num<<endl;
- cout<< “the address of num is ”<<&num<<endl;
- p_num = #// puts address of num in p_num;
- cout<< “*p_num is ”<<*p_num<<endl; //prints value of num
- cout<< “p_num is ”<<p_num<<endl; //prints value of P_num
- getch();
- }
2.3. Pointer to void
Note that we can’t assign the address of a float type variable to an integer pointer variable
and similarly the address of an integer variable cannot be stored in a float or character
pointer.
flaot y;
int x;
int *ip;
float *fp;
ip = &y; //illegal
That means, if a variable type and pointer to type is same, then only we can assign the
address of variable to pointer variable. And if both are different
type then we can’t assign the address of variable to pointer variable but this
is also possible in C++ by declaring pointer variable as a void as follows:
void *p;
Let us see an example:
void *p;
int x;
float y;
p = &x; //valid assignment
p = &y; //valid assignment
The difficulty on void pointers is that, void pointers cannot be de referenced. They are
aimed only to store address and the dereference operator is not allowed for void pointers.
2.4. Arrays of Pointers
If you have to reserve many pointers for many different values, you might want to declare
an array of pointers.
The following reserves an array of 10 integer pointer variables:
int *iptr[10]; //reserves an array of 10 integer pointers
The above statement will create the following structure in RAM
iptr[4] = &age;// makes iptr[4] point to address of age.
2.5. Pointer and arrays
The concept of array goes very bound to the one of pointer. In fact, the identifier of
an array is equivalent to the address of its first element, like a pointer is equivalent
to the address of the first element that it points to, so in fact they are the same
thing. For example, supposing these two declarations:
int numbers [20];
int * p;
The following allocation would be valid:
p = numbers;
At this point p and numbers are equivalent and they have the same properties,
with the only difference that we could assign another value to the pointer p
whereas numbers will always point to the first of the 20 integer numbers of type
int with which it was defined. So, unlike p, that is an ordinary variable pointer,
numbers is a constant pointer (indeed that is an Array: a constant pointer).
Therefore, although the previous expression was valid, the following allocation is
not:
numbers = p;
Because numbers is an array (constant pointer), and no values can be assigned to constant
identifiers.
N.B: An array name is just a pointer, nothing more. The array name always points to the
first element stored in the array. Therefore+ , we can have the following valid C++ code:
int ara[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};
cout<< *(ara + 2); //prints ara[2];
The expression *(ara+2) is not vague at all if you remember that an array name is just a
pointer that always points to the array’s first element. *(ara+2) takes the address stored in
ara, adds 2 to the address, and dereferences that location.
Consider the following character array:
char name[] = “C++ Programming”;
What output do the following cout statements produce?
cout<<name[0]; // ____C__
cout<<*name; // _____C__
cout<<*(name+3); //_________
cout<<*(name+0); //____C____
2.6. Pointer Advantage
You can’t change the value of an array name, because you can’t change constants. This
explains why you can’t assign an array a new value during a program’s execution: eg: if
Cname is array of characters then: Cname = “Football”; //invalid array assignment;
Unlike arrays, you can change a pointer variable. By changing pointers, you can make
them point to different values in memory. Have a look at the following code:
#include<iostream.h>
#include<conio.h>
void main()
{
clrscr();
float v1 = 679.54;
float v2 = 900.18;
float * p_v;
p_v = &v1;
cout<< “\nthe first value is ”<<*p_v;
p_v = &v2;
cout<< “\nthe second value is ”<<*p_v;
getch();
}
You can use pointer notation and reference pointers as arrays with array notation. Study
the following program carefully. It shows the inner workings of arrays and pointer
notation.
void main()
{
clrscr();
int ctr;
int iara[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};
int *iptr;
iptr = iara; //makes iprt point to array’s first element. Or iprt = &iara[0]
cout<< “using array subscripts :\n”
cout<< “iara\tiptr\n”;
for(ctr=0;ctr<5;ctr++)
{
cout<<iara[ctr]<< “\t”<< iptr[ctr]<< “\n”;
}
cout<< “\nUsing pointer notation\n”;
for(ctr=0;ctr<5;ctr++)
{
cout<< *(iara+ctr) << “\t” << *(iptr+ctr)<< “\n”;
}
getch();
Suppose that you want to store a person’s name and print it. Rather than using arrays, you
can use a character pointer. The following program does just that. void main()
{
clrscr();
char *c = “Meseret Belete”;
cout<< “your name is : ”<<c;
}
Suppose that you must change a string pointed to by a character pointer, if the person’s
name in the above code is changed to Meseter Alemu: look at the following code:
void main()
{
char *c = “Meseret Belete”;
cout<< “youe name is : ”<<c;
c = “Meseret Alemu”;
cout<< “\nnew person name is : ”<<c;
getch();
}
If c were a character array you could never assign it directly because an array name can’t
be changed.
6.7. Pointer Arithmetic
To conduct arithmetical operations on pointers is a little different than to conduct them on
other integer data types. To begin, only addition and subtraction operations are allowed to
be conducted, the others make no sense in the world of pointers. But both addition and
subtraction have a different behavior with pointers according to the size of the data type to
which they point to.
When we saw the different data types that exist, we saw that some occupy more or less
space than others in the memory. For example, in the case of integer numbers, char
occupies 1 byte, short occupies 2 bytes and long occupies 4.
Let's suppose that we have 3 pointers:
char *mychar;
short *myshort;
long *mylong;
And that we know that they point to memory locations 1000 , 2000
and 3000 respectively. So if we write:
mychar++;
myshort++;
mylong++;
my char , as you may expect, would contain the value 1001 . Nevertheless,
myshort would contain the value 2002, and mylong would contain 3004 .
The reason is that when adding 1 to a pointer we are making it to point to
the following element of the same type with which it has been defined, and
therefore the size in bytes of the type pointed is added to the pointer.
This is applicable both when adding and subtracting any number to a pointer.
It is important to warn you that both increase ( ++ ) and decrease ( -- ) operators have a greater
priority than the reference operator asterisk ( * ), therefore the following expressions may lead
to confusion: *p++; *p++ = *q++;
The first one is equivalent to *(p++) and what it does is to increase p (the address where it
points to - not the value that contains). The second, because both increase operators ( ++ ) are
after the expressions to be evaluated and not before, first the value of *q is assigned to *p and
then they are both q and p increased by one. It is equivalent to:
*p = *q;
p++;
q++;
Now let us have a look at a code that shows increments through an integer array: void main()
{
int iara[] = {10,20,30,40,50};
int * ip = iara;
cout<<*ip<<endl;
ip++;
cout<<*ip<<endl;
ip++;
cout<<*ip<<endl;
ip++;
cout<<*ip<<endl;
}
Pointer and String
If you declare a character table with 5 rows and 20 columns, each row would contain the same
number of characters. You can define the table with the following statement.
char names[5][20] ={{“George”},{“Mesfin”},{“John”},{“Kim”},{“Barbara”}};
The above statement will create the following table in memory:
G e o r g e \0
M e s f i n \0
J o h n \0
K i m \0
B a r b a r a \0
Notice that much of the table is waster space. Each row takes 20 characters, even though the
data in each row takes far fewer characters.
To fix the memory-wasting problem of fully justified tables, you should declare a single-
dimensional array of character pointers. Each pointer points to a string in memory and the
strings do not have to be the same length.
Here is the definition for such an array:
char *name [5] = {{“George”},{“Mesfin”},{“John”}, {“Kim”},{“Barbara”}};
This array is a single-dimension array. The asterisk before names makes this array an array of
pointers. Each string takes only as much memory as is needed by the string and its terminating
zero. At this time, we will have this structure in memory:
To print the first string, we should use: cout<<*names; //prints George.
To print the second use:
cout<< *(names+1); //prints Michael
Whenever you dereference any pointer element with the * dereferencing operator, you access
one of the strings in the array.
Pointer to pointer
As the memory address where integer, float or character is stored in can be stored into a
pointer variable, the address of a pointer can also be stored in another pointer. This pointer is
said to be pointer to a pointer.
An array of pointer is conceptually same as pointer to pointer type. The pointer to pointer type
is declared as follows: Data_type ** pointer_name;
Note that the asterisk is double here.
int **p; //p is a pointer which holds the address another pointer.
Example
char a;
char * b;
char ** c;
a = 'z';
b = &a;
c = &b;
This, supposing the randomly chosen memory locations of 7230 , 8092 and 10502 , could
be described thus:
A B C
‘Z’ 7230 8092
7230 8092 10502
(Inside the cells there is the content of the variable; under the cells its
location)
Have a look at the following code: #...
#...
void main()
{
clrscr();
int data;
int *p1;
int **p2;
data = 15;
cout<< “data = ”<<data<<endl;
p1 = &data;
p2 = &p1;
cout<< “data through p1 = ”<<*p1<<endl;
cout<< “data through p2 = ”<< **p2<<endl;
getch();
}
Dynamic memory:
Until now, in our programs, we have only had as much memory as we have requested in
declarations of variables, arrays and other objects that we included, having the size of all of
them to be fixed before the execution of the program. But, What if we need a variable
amount of memory that can only be determined during the program execution (runtime)?
For example, in case that we need a user input to determine the necessary amount of space.
The answer is dynamic memory, for which C++ integrates the operators new and delete.
Pointers are useful for creating dynamic objects during program execution. Unlike normal
(global and local) objects which are allocated storage on the runtime stack, a dynamic
object is allocated memory from a different storage area called the heap. Dynamic objects
do not obey the normal scope rules. Their scope is explicitly controlled by the programmer.
a) The New Operator
In C++ new operator can create space dynamically i.e at run time, and similarly
delete operator is also available which releases the memory taken by a variable
and return memory to the operating system.
When the space is created for a variable at compile time this approach is called
static. If space is created at run time for a variable, this approach is called
dynamic. See the following two lines:
int a[10];//creation of static array
int *a;
a = new int[10];//creation of dynamic array
Lets have another example:
int * ptr3;
ptr3 = new int [5];
In this case, the operating system has assigned space for 5 elements of type int in
the heap and it has returned a pointer to its beginning that has been assigned to
ptr3 . Therefore, now, ptr3 points to a valid block of memory with space for 5 int
elements.
You could ask what is the difference between declaring a normal array and assigning
memory to a pointer as we have just done. The most important one is that the size of an
array must be a constant value, which limits its size to what we decide at the moment of
designing the program before its execution, whereas the dynamic memory allocation
allows assigning memory during the execution of the program using any variable, constant
or combination of both as size.
The dynamic memory is generally managed by the operating system, and in the multi-task
interfaces can be shared between several applications, so there is a possibility that the
memory exhausts. If this happens and the operating system cannot assign the memory that
we request with the operator new , a null pointer will be returned. For that reason it is
recommendable to always verify if after a call to instruction new the returned pointer is
null:
int * ptr3;
ptr3 = new int [5];
if (ptr3 == NULL)
{
// error assigning memory. Take measures.
};
if ptr3 is NULL, it means that there is no enough memory location in the heap to be given
for ptr3.
b) Operator deletes
Since the necessity of dynamic memory is usually limited to concrete moments
within a program, once this one is no longer needed it shall be freed so that it
become available for future requests of dynamic memory. For this exists the
operator delete , whose form is:
delete pointer ;
or
delete [] pointer ;
The first expression should be used to delete memory allocated for a single
element, and the second one for memory allocated for multiple elements (arrays).
In most compilers both expressions are equivalent and can be used without
distinction, although indeed they are two different operators and so must be
considered for operator overloading.
In the following simple example, a program that memorizes numbers, does not
have a limited amount of numbers that can be introduced, thanks to the concept
and power of pointer that we request to the system as much space as it is
necessary to store all the numbers that the user wishes to introduce.
#include <iostream.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include<conio.h>
int main ()
{
char input [100];
int i,n;
long * num;// total = 0;
cout << "How many numbers do you want to type in? ";
[Link] (input,100);
i=atoi (input);
num= new long[i];
if (num == NULL)
{
cout<<"\nno enough memory!";
getch();
exit (1);
}
for (n=0; n<i; n++)
{
cout << "Enter number: ";
[Link] (input,100);
num[n]=atol (input);
}
cout << "You have entered: ";
for (n=0; n<i; n++)
cout << num[n] << ", ";
delete[] num;
getch();
return 0;
}
• NULL is a constant value defined in C++ libraries specially designed to indicate null
pointers. In case that this constant is not defined you can do it yourself by defining it to
0: