Discussion
Which of the following are fundamental operation on pointers ?
(i) implicit dereferencing
(ii) indirection
(iii) explicit referencing
(iv) addressing
Answer: A
The key's answer is (i), (ii) and (iii). I could not trace the three-term list to a source, so this follows the key.
A pointer is used through two basic actions: setting it to point at an object, and following it to reach the object it points at. Following a pointer is dereferencing or indirection, which a language may do implicitly (as with Ada's access types and Fortran 90 pointers) or explicitly with an operator such as the * of C. Referencing, the counterpart that produces a pointer to an object (the & of C), is the explicit-referencing item. The standard treatments I found (Sebesta) name two operations, assignment and dereferencing, so the grouping in (i) to (iii) is the paper's own.
Addressing, item (iv), is how a machine locates a memory cell and is not a pointer operation in the language sense, so (iv) only is out, and the pairs that leave out (i) or (iii) are incomplete on the key's reading.
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