C/C++ Pointers & Applications

C & C++ are very powerful languages when it comes to performance & flexibility. But there are some features that are complex and take time to master. One of such features is pointers. Pointers is what separates C/C++ from other languages. These are incredibly powerful as they allow programs to access memory directly and manipulate it.

This course focuses on pointers and their applications.It leans more towards implementation in C++, rather C. You’ll learn the basics of pointers and then move on to understanding and implementing arrays, pointers to arrays & heap based arrays. You’ll also learn advanced memory management by creating a custom dynamic array (just like std::vector<T> in standard C++ library). You’ll use placement new & delete to directly place objects in a memory pool allocated through operator new function. As you’ll see later in the course, this is a powerful mechanism to optimize usage of heap memory with user–defined objects.

After arrays, you’ll learn how to use pointers to create node–based data structures. We’ll focus on two types of linked lists – singly & doubly linked lists. You’ll understand the difference between arrays and lists and also learn how to access the elements of both the data structures without having to know their internal structure. This is possible by creating context variables that allows access in a container–agnostic manner.