Chapter Summary

This chapter covered arrays and pointers. These facilities provide functionality similar to that provided by the library vector and string types and their companion iterators. The vector type can be thought of as a more flexible, easier to manage array. Similarly, strings are a great improvement on C-style strings that are implemented as null-terminated character arrays.

Iterators and pointers allow indirect access to objects. Iterators are used to examine elements and navigate between the elements in vectors. Pointers provide similar access to array elements. Although conceptually simple, pointers are notoriously hard to use in practice.

Pointers and arrays can be necessary for certain low-level tasks, but they should be avoided because they are error-prone and hard to debug. In general, the library abstractions should be used in preference to low-level array and pointer alternatives built into the language. This advice is especially applicable to using strings instead of C-style null-terminated character arrays. Modern C++ programs should not use C-style strings.