For simple reasons according to me: 1- It reduces overhead drastically,thus more efficient execution time is achieved. Consider a recursive function call having array parameters -> func (int a[100][100], int b[100][100]).. Now instead if we use pointers-> func(int **a, int **b), the overhead on the stack of the language decreases drastically and thus further reducing the execution time of the code!!
2- It allows dynamic memory storage. If you do not know the amount of memory needed, then using dynamic allocaton using pointer is the best way. Consider we have an array -> arr[1000], but we actually need to use only 10,5, or even 2 sized array! This will lead to huge memory wastage.. instead we can do size_type *arr= new size_type[size]. thus this leads to more space efficient code and avoid chances of memory overflow. 3- Access to an entity via pointer is faster!! :P Hope this helps! On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Debabrata Das < debabrata.barunhal...@gmail.com> wrote: > @ arun... 8 byte may be for 64 bit application or far pointer ... > > On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 6:29 PM, Arun Vishwanathan > <aaron.nar...@gmail.com> wrote: > > @atul/shady: why is it that pointer takes 8 bytes ? So the takes a memory > > location whose value is the address of the element it points to. Why does > > the pointer value have to take 8 bytes? I am sorry if I am missing > something > > silly here. > > -- > > > --
