Why is dereferencing a pointer called dereferencing?
- by optician
Why is dereferencing called dereferencing?
I'm just learning pointers properly, and I'd like to know why dereferencing is called that. It confused me as it sounds like you are removing a reference, rather than going via the pointer to the destination.
Can anyone explain why it is called this?
To me something like destination or pointed_to_value would make more sense.