Software pointer

Generic name of a variable which value represents a memory address, and can be used to refer to other variables and structures.

Pointer manipulation is supported in most computer languages, altought newer languages often encapsulate their usage (i.e. objects are pointers with some restrictions concerning the architecture).

The use of pointers is a powerful tool to create and mantain dynamic structures, such as lists, trees and graphs.

There is a constant value associated to pointer management, called a null pointer. A null pointer is a pointer that points to a memory location which remains unused (usually address Zero - hence 'null'). An attempt to de-reference a null pointer is obviously an error, therefore, null pointers are used as initialization values.