Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, fifth edition

Hour 11. Developing Advanced Pointers

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

• How to create objects on the heap

• How to use pointers effectively

• How to prevent memory problems when using pointers

Creating Objects on the Heap

One of the most powerful tools available to a C++ programmer is the capability to directly manipulate computer memory by using pointers.

Just as you can create a pointer to an integer, you can create a pointer to any object. If you have declared an object of type Cat, you can declare a pointer to that class and instantiate a Cat object on the heap, just as you can make one on the stack. The syntax is the same as for integers:

Cat *pCat = new Cat;

This calls the default constructor—the constructor that takes no parameters. ...