Hi everyone ✋ Well ─ here we are. This is the final post in our long journey through C++ pointers 🏁. Over this series we’ve gone from “what even is an address?” all the way to polymorphism, smart pointers, and the deep machinery of the language. In the previous post we watched base pointers bring […]
Pointers vs References Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ We’ve spent this whole series getting to know pointers from every angle. In the previous post we finished mastering smart pointers ─ cycles, weak_ptr, custom deleters, and ownership. Today we reach what is, for many people, the single most powerful thing pointers do in C++ ─ they make polymorphism possible 🎭. If
Base and Derived Pointers ─ Polymorphism Through Pointers Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we stared down the dark side of pointers ─ wild and dangling pointers ─ and saw that the cleanest cure for most of them is to let smart pointers own our memory. We first met smart pointers back in the smart pointers post, where unique_ptr and shared_ptr did
Smart Pointers Part 2 Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ Over this whole series we’ve learned to love pointers ─ how they hold addresses, walk arrays, reach into objects, manage memory, and even name members in the abstract. Today we turn the lamp on the dark side 🌑. Every scary story you’ve heard about C++ ─ mysterious crashes, corrupted data, “it worked
Dangling and Wild Pointers Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we met the this pointer ─ the hidden pointer that lets an object refer to itself. We pushed our house picture nicely along: an object is a house, and this is the card by the door holding its own address. Today we take that one curious step further
Pointers to Members Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we learned how to reach into an object through a pointer using the arrow operator ->. We pictured an object as a house 🏠, its members as rooms, and a pointer as the address slip that gets us there. Today we turn that idea inward and ask a
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we sorted out NULL vs nullptr ─ how to say “this pointer leads nowhere” in a clean, type-safe way. Along the way we leaned on a little picture of address slips and a mailroom 📬. Today we pick that picture right back up ─ because now we finally
Member Access with the Arrow Operator Read More »
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we learned how to lock our pointers down with const ─ freezing either the value a pointer looks at, the address it holds, or both. We spent that whole post deciding what a pointer is allowed to change. Today we ask a different question ─ what if a
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we peeled the label off our pointers and met the mysterious, typeless void pointer 📦 ─ a pointer that can hold the address of anything, but knows the type of nothing. If we haven’t read the earlier posts in this series, it’s worth going through them first ─
Hi everyone ✋ In the previous post we stacked pointers on top of pointers and conquered that dizzying double asterisk ** 😵💫. In this post we are gonna learn about ─ the mysterious, “typeless” void pointer 😉 If you haven’t read the earlier posts in this series, please go through them first ─ especially the