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C++ Pointers and References

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Data can be stored using variables, and variables store data in memory.

But what if we want to access that memory directly? We can use a reference operator &.

char letter = 'A';
cout << &letter;

The reference operator returns the exact memory address where the data in a specific variable is stored.

In short, it takes any variable, then gives where in memory is the data inside it is stored.

For example, if we output them:

char letter = 'A';
char *address = &letter;
 
cout << letter << endl; // Outputs 'A'
cout << address << endl; // Outputs a memory address, like 0x1000

A pointer, also known as a dereference operator, takes a memory address and returns the exact data stored in that address.
So if we output *address, it should return 'A' as that was the value stored in that specific address.

To store a memory address of a variable var, we often store it in a pointer:

dataType *address = &var;

The data type of *address* should be the same as the data type of dataType.

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