Pointer (computer programming)

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer science, a pointer is a variable whose value is a location in the computer's memory.[1] If Rick stands in a room and points to his friend Sally, then Rick is a pointer whose value is Sally's location. A programmer must dereference the pointer to retrieve the object it points to. Pointers do not take up much memory (RAM). Copying a pointer to a large object is faster than copying the large object itself because only the location needs to be copied, instead of the whole object.

Uses of Pointers[change | change source]

Pointers are used in linked lists. Each record of a linked list has a pointer to the next record. These pointers chain the records together. This means that the records in a linked list can be sorted and arranged by changing their pointers.

References[change | change source]

  1. N. Datta, Computer Programming and Numerical Analysis (Hyderabad Universities Press, 2003), p. 465