What is the purpose of the indirection operator

What is the purpose of the indirection operator? To what type of operand must the indirection operator be applied?

The correct answer and explanation is :

The indirection operator (often denoted by the asterisk *) in programming is used to access the value that a pointer is pointing to. In simpler terms, it allows you to dereference a pointer, meaning that it enables you to work with the value stored at the memory location the pointer is referencing.

Purpose of the Indirection Operator:

The primary purpose of the indirection operator is to enable manipulation of data at a memory address directly. When you have a pointer, it contains the memory address of another variable. The indirection operator allows you to access the value stored at that address, as opposed to just working with the address itself.

For example, if you have a pointer p that points to an integer variable, using *p will give you the integer value stored at the address the pointer is pointing to. This is crucial in scenarios where direct access to the variable in memory is necessary, such as dynamic memory management, function arguments passed by reference, or working with low-level hardware in systems programming.

Type of Operand for the Indirection Operator:

The operand to which the indirection operator must be applied must be a pointer. Specifically, the operand must be a pointer type, such as int*, char*, float*, etc. If the operand is not a pointer, using the indirection operator will result in a compile-time error.

Here’s an example in C++:

int a = 10;
int* p = &a;  // p is a pointer to int, pointing to a
int b = *p;   // b is now 10, as *p dereferences the pointer and gets the value of a

In this example, p is a pointer to a. The indirection operator *p retrieves the value stored at the memory address that p points to (in this case, the value of a).

In summary, the indirection operator is used to dereference a pointer, giving access to the value it points to. It can only be applied to pointer operands, as applying it to non-pointer types leads to errors.