Dereference Operator

The dereference operator or indirection operator, denoted by "*" (i.e. an asterisk), is a unary operator found in C-like languages that include pointer variables. It operates on a pointer variable, and returns an l-value equivalent to the value at the pointer address. This is called "dereferencing" the pointer. For example, the C code

int x = 0; int *pointer_to_x = &x; (*pointer_to_x) = 1; //x is now equal to 1

increments the variable x by using the indirection operator and a pointer to the variable x.