What does address-of operator (&) mean?
![What is & (Address-of Operator)? What is & (Address-of Operator)?](https://techterminologies.com/img/address-of-operator-definition_hu425066ad7702bdec6fced5a0dff4e62e_205302_800x450_fill_q90_box_center.jpg)
In most programming languages, the address-of
operator &
is used to get the memory address of a variable. For example, if you have a variable x that contains the value 5
, you can get the memory address of x
by using the &
operator in front of it. So, if you wrote &x
, it would give you the memory address where the value 5
is stored in memory.
More information
The address-of
operator &
is commonly used for two main purposes in programming.
First, as mentioned earlier, the &
operator is used to get the memory address of a variable. This can be useful in certain situations, such as when you want to pass the address of a variable to a function as an argument.
Second, the &
operator is also often used in combination with the dereference operator *
to create a reference to a variable. In this case, the &
operator is used to get the address of a variable, and the *
operator is used to create a reference to that variable. This reference can then be used to access and modify the original variable, as if it were a pointer.
For example, in C++, you could use the &
and *
operators like this:
int x = 5;
int *ptr = &x; // Get the address of x and create a reference to it using the * operator
*ptr = 10; // Use the reference to modify the value of x
// At this point, the value of x is 10
In this example, the ptr
variable is a reference to the x
variable, which means that you can use ptr
to access and modify the value of x
as if it were a pointer.
The &
operator is a useful tool for working with memory addresses and references in programming, and it has many applications in a variety of situations.