Lesson 9.5 : Why do you need to learn pointers?

[danwest]

4:13 in the video. The is THE BEST explanation I've heard about WHY pointers are necessary. It makes sense to me now. Before, I was wondering why pointers are used if they behave just like a regular variable value in memory. This allows data of various types and potentially much greater sizes to be referenced and accessed. Not all data sets fit neatly into the categories of string, int, char, double, etc. I am sure that there is MUCH MORE that can be done with pointers, but I think I have grapsed the notion of why and how they are used. Thank you for posting this.

[TazGGGUNOT]

Thank you for explaining explicity how pointers are used in programming! I never doubted it was important to understand how pointers worked, but knowing how they are applied is satisfying!

[theforeverpuddle]

Sublime and beautiful.  This is the missing link between thinking as a beginner and really understanding how things work and being able to move forward.  Great video.

Carl's still a despicable human.

[SpellsOfTruth]

Took you forever to get to the point, but still one of the only videos in existence that teaches the real purpose of pointers.

[peternichols]

I think I now know less than I did before.

[robinn]

a good teacher explains clearly in simple, easy to understand language and drills it until one understands. such a difference it makes when you have one. growing up, with 1st language not english, it can be pretty hard to understand with all the syntax jargons. A* in teaching!

[johntryl]

This is kinda correct but sorta missing the whole real point of pointers. Pointers quite simply, allow you to recall where in memory something is stored. It has nothing to do with the size of the memory (quantity of data stored there). The point is data location, not data size. The whole reason for pointers is to remember location in memory ... this allows us to deallocate after allocating, update memory directly, and just generally work with memory in a way you can't achieve if you don't store the memory locations to a pointer variable. Again, size doesn't matter. A pointer to a pointer is small, but you still have to store ** if you wanna really do proper memory management...size dun matter yo, location do. You're not wrong, but you missed the most critical part about pointers so I felt compelled to write. Cheers.

[mikolajwojnicki]

The real question is why do I need to use pointers explicitly?
Everything you described I can do in Java without thinking about pointers.

[maveasna]

So, after you explained I now knew how important the pointer is and I really appreciate you so much.

[phixphixation]

A pointer is like the needle of a record player.

[VivekYadav-dsoz]

Sir could you please give an example of a program that would not, by any means, work WITHOUT a pointer, or atleast will be incredibly difficult to do so. Thanks again!

[nicvane]

That’s great…but I still don’t know why it is essential to use pointers. Why is it that pointers are used in all those scenarios rather than just referencing the actual variable?

[starmount]

unassigned short int var=2 ;
int* ptr = &var ; //this declaration is where people get confused. This statement actually combines 2 declarations
1> ptr=&var //the address of var gets assigned to ptr POINTER
2> *ptr=var =2 //the value stored in the address of ptr

[Decco]

This makes programming my z80 cpu so much easier. thanks.

[K.E.N.J.I.B.A.B.Y]

I don't understand why we can't just use type string strings.
Example: string this_string = "this is a string";

[ovalwingnut]

Dang. IMPOSSIBLE to listen to this guy now... A crying shame on so many levels, words don't describe :O\

[gpurohit]

Thank you so much sir
My mind just blowed out through your explanation thanks again

[axiom-programmingbasics]

you just put me to sleep and terminated my memory.

[Indi_DevJames]

i dont get it int i = 1; i = 2;....i didnt use a pointer

[subject_of_ymir]

I came here to learn, then I read the comments. My mind is fucked. I can't concentrate on my books anymore.