Search⌘ K
Home
Courses
Learn Object-Oriented Programming in C++

Pointer Arithmetic

Explore pointer arithmetic in C++ to understand how pointer increments affect memory addresses, how arrays relate to pointers, and the operators pointers support. Gain practical knowledge to manage memory efficiently and prepare for advanced C++ topics.

We'll cover the following...

Basic Addition and Subtraction

Consider a simple pointer, p, which points to a value of 10. What would happen if we increment it by 1?

C++
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  int *p = new int(10);
  cout << "p: " << p << endl;
  cout << "value of p: " << *p << endl << endl;
  
  p = p + 1;
  cout << "p: " << p << endl;
  cout << "value of p: " << *p << endl << endl;
}

As we can observe, incrementing p actually increments its address. Since it is an integer pointer, the address jumps 4 bytes ahead (the size of an integer is 4 bytes).

The value of p becomes 0 which represents null or an empty space. This can be a dangerous ...