Pointers?

[17poGNh0]

I see -> in code all the time. Is it not easier to just avoid them? Wht are the advantagez?

[Texan40]

If you have an instance of a class object for class Thing, say:

int count = Thing.count();

If you have a pointer to a Thing object:

int count = Thing->count();

There are no particular advantages to the syntax. Generally I use references to class instances instead of pointers, though.

[Albatross]

Say you have a pointer to a class, and say that class has a pointer to another class, and you need to access a member of that inner class. You could use something like the following:

(*(*classouter).classinner).member

...but I'm pretty sure that many programmers would agree with me in saying that this doesn't look very nice. Instead, you could use the -> operator to express the same thing like this:

classouter->classinner->member

Isn't that a lot easier to read? :) You can think of it like the . operator except for pointers to classes.

-Albatross

[17poGNh0]

Altbat, Why use pointers at all???

[17poGNh0]

I agree with Texan, is there a point??!?!?

[Moschops]

Your question essentially tells us that you're very inexperienced. That's no crime; what does seem foolish is to think that because you don't use them, they are useless.

You use pointers:

- To control object lifetime yourself beyond local scope.
- When you need to make an object that is too big to fit on the stack (very common, especially workig with large files such as images).
- To implement polymorphism.
- More.

[17poGNh0]

thankyou Moschops. you make more good point.