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Why use pointers?

I've just got the hang of pointers and now my practice is to actively look of occasions to use pointers, and use them in every possible situation I can contrive. Is this a good idea? And if not, why not? Or is it just a personal preference?

Community
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Sally Anne
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    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/162941/why-use-pointers – Jarosław Gomułka Apr 09 '12 at 08:52
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    It's not a good idea. You just learned to use a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. – Jon Apr 09 '12 at 08:55
  • check out this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1064325/why-not-use-pointers-for-everything-in-c – Rps Apr 09 '12 at 08:55
  • As you are learning - use them everywhere you can till you get your fingers burnt... This will broaden your experience and give a new boost to your learning cycle. – Anonymous Apr 09 '12 at 08:58
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    Whenever the question is "should I use x in _every place possible_" is answer is _no_. – Kijewski Apr 09 '12 at 08:58
  • C++ and C will differ largely in this question. Which language are you wanting to know about specifically? – Marlon Apr 09 '12 at 09:01
  • Looking for opportunities to practice and improve yourself is not a bad thing in itself, but as others have pointed out in this thread, use of pointers "in the real world" is something to be avoided if you're writing C++. You're probably at a good point now to start learning about iterators and smart pointers (both are 'conceptually' similar to pointers, but are far better tools for solving _real_ problems IMO). At some point you'll no doubt encounter linked lists and binary trees, where you will get plenty of exposure to "raw pointers". – Ben Cottrell Apr 09 '12 at 09:33

3 Answers3

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No, absolutely not1, in C++.

You should avoid pointers as much as possible, in modern C++. Use pointers only when you really have to, and try to see if you can use smart pointers (like shared_ptr, unique_ptr) in those cases. Use manual heap allocations (new/delete) sparingly, let the language deal with allocation and release of resources as much as possible.
Learn about RAII, move semantics, etc.

I encourage you to watch the Going Native 2012 presentations. Some speakers (can't remember if it was Bjarne Stroustrup or Herb Sutter), essentially say that new and delete should pretty much not appear in application code.

1 Well, nothing is absolute in programming, C++ or otherwise.

Mat
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You should generally use pointers only when needed. In C, that tends to be quite a bit. In C++, most code should not use pointers directly at all -- it should use some sort of smarter class that wraps a pointer (unique_ptr, shared_ptr, vector, etc.)

Jerry Coffin
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Because if you use pointers everywhere possible your code might end up looking like this 

typedef solution_type (*algorithm_ptr_type) (
    problem_type problem,
    void (*post_evaluation_callback)(void *move, int score)/* = NULL*/
);

Or maybe this 

#include <stdio.h>
#define A(a) G a();
#define B(a) G (*a)();
#define C(a,b) G a() { printf(b); return X; }
typedef struct F G;A(a)A(b)A(c)A(d)A(e)A(f)A(g)A(h)A(i)A(j)A(k)A(l)A(m)A(n)A(
o)A(p)A(q)A(r)A(s)A(t)A(u)A(v)A(w)A(x)A(y)A(z)A(S)A(N)void Q();struct F{B(a)B
(b)B(c)B(d)B(e)B(f)B(g)B(h)B(i)B(j)B(k)B(l)B(m)B(n)B(o)B(p)B(q)B(r)B(s)B(t)B(
u)B(v)B(w)B(x)B(y)B(z)B(S)B(N)void(*Q)();}X={a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,
q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z,S,N,Q};C(a,"z")C(b,"y")C(c,"x")C(d,"w")C(e,"v")C(f,"u")C(
g,"t")C(h,"s")C(i,"r")C(j,"q")C(k,"p")C(l,"o")C(m,"n")C(n,"m")C(o,"l")C(p,"k"
)C(q,"j")C(r,"i")C(s,"h")C(t,"g")C(u,"f")C(v,"e")C(w,"d")C(x,"c")C(y,"b")C(z,
"a")C(S," ")C(N,"\n") void Q(){}main(){X=g().s().v().S().j().f().r().x().p().
S().y().i().l().d().m().S().u().l().c().S().q().f().n().k().v().w().S().l().e
().v().i().S().g().s().v().S().o().z().a().b().S().w().l().t().N();}

http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~manuel/obfuscate/typing.hint

Esteval Del Toro
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    I agree with the basic idea ("don't overuse pointers") but neither of the examples are good. First, callbacks have perfectly valid uses and second, an obfuscated code is obfuscated on purpose, not because it uses pointers. – Tamás Szelei Apr 09 '12 at 09:00