After a pointer has been declared and initialized, when do you prefix the variable literal with asterisk and when not?

Question

Does the plain literal refer to the address and *literal refer to the actual value at the address? So, AFTER:

int i = 0;
int *iPointer = &i;

the following expression will lookup the VALUE AT memory address &i:

*iPointer

and the following will simply yield the memory address &i:

iPointer

I stepped through and verified my hypothesis, but I want to make sure (you never know with these things).

I guess I'm just confused by the * symbol's different purposes in declaration and access.

Answer 1

Yes, that's absolutely correct.

Also, note that & can also declare a reference, depending on context.

In a declaration, * declares a pointer type.

When applied on a pointer (like *ptr), it represents the dereference operator and returns the value the pointer points to.

Note that operator * can be overloaded, so you can also apply it to objects, not only pointers, and have it do whatever you want.