Why should I use a pointer rather than the object itself?

Question

I\'m coming from a Java background and have started working with objects in C++. But one thing that occurred to me is that people often use pointers to objects rather than t

Answer 1

There are many excellent answers to this question, including the important use cases of forward declarations, polymorphism etc. but I feel a part of the "soul" of your question is not answered - namely what the different syntaxes mean across Java and C++.

Let's examine the situation comparing the two languages:

Java:

Object object1 = new Object(); //A new object is allocated by Java
Object object2 = new Object(); //Another new object is allocated by Java

object1 = object2; 
//object1 now points to the object originally allocated for object2
//The object originally allocated for object1 is now "dead" - nothing points to it, so it
//will be reclaimed by the Garbage Collector.
//If either object1 or object2 is changed, the change will be reflected to the other

The closest equivalent to this, is:

C++:

Object * object1 = new Object(); //A new object is allocated on the heap
Object * object2 = new Object(); //Another new object is allocated on the heap
delete object1;
//Since C++ does not have a garbage collector, if we don't do that, the next line would 
//cause a "memory leak", i.e. a piece of claimed memory that the app cannot use 
//and that we have no way to reclaim...

object1 = object2; //Same as Java, object1 points to object2.

Let's see the alternative C++ way:

Object object1; //A new object is allocated on the STACK
Object object2; //Another new object is allocated on the STACK
object1 = object2;//!!!! This is different! The CONTENTS of object2 are COPIED onto object1,
//using the "copy assignment operator", the definition of operator =.
//But, the two objects are still different. Change one, the other remains unchanged.
//Also, the objects get automatically destroyed once the function returns...

The best way to think of it is that -- more or less -- Java (implicitly) handles pointers to objects, while C++ may handle either pointers to objects, or the objects themselves. There are exceptions to this -- for example, if you declare Java "primitive" types, they are actual values that are copied, and not pointers. So,

Java:

int object1; //An integer is allocated on the stack.
int object2; //Another integer is allocated on the stack.
object1 = object2; //The value of object2 is copied to object1.

That said, using pointers is NOT necessarily either the correct or the wrong way to handle things; however other answers have covered that satisfactorily. The general idea though is that in C++ you have much more control on the lifetime of the objects, and on where they will live.

Take home point -- the Object * object = new Object() construct is actually what is closest to typical Java (or C# for that matter) semantics.