Dereference
<programming> To access the thing to which a pointer points, i.e. to follow the pointer.
E.g. in
C, the declarations
int i; int *p = &i;
declare i as an integer and p as a pointer to integer.
p is initialised to point at i ("&i" is the address of i - the inverse of "*").
The expression *p dereferences p to yield i as an
lvalue, i.e. something which can appear either on the left of an
assignment or anywhere an integer expression is valid.
Thus
*p = 17;
would set i to 17.
*p++ is not the same as i++ however since it is parsed as *(p++), i.e. increment p (which would be an invalid thing to do if it was pointing to a single int, as in this example) then dereference p's old value.
The
C operator "->" also dereferences its left hand argument which is assumed to point to a structure or
union of which the right hand argument is a member.
At first sight the word "dereference" might be thought to mean "to cause to stop referring" but its meaning is well established in jargon.
