Pointers, Arrays, and References

In C++, arrays are used to store a fixed-size sequence of elements of the same data type. To create an array in C++, you need to follow certain requirements:

Alternatives to Pointer:

Looking at Pointer heavy code is difficult to determine intent of the programmer. Unless you are writing libraries you should almost never have to worry about manual allocation and deallocation. Memory for objects should be allocated in a constructor, and then deallocated in the destructor. Use containers such as std::vector (for resizable arrays) and std::array (for fixed size arrays) instead of the naive array type. They are essentially zero-overhead, take care of all allocation, reallocation ( in the case of vector) and deallocation, and provide a fairly comprehensive interface.

Consider using the Standard Library before using pointers for general Software Engineering. In modern C++ (11 and later) 

• To hold a collection of values, consider a container, such as vector, set, map, unordered_map, or array
• To hold a string of characters, consider String
• To point to an object you own (i.e., must delete) use unique_ptr, or shared_ptr
• To point to a continguous sequence of elements that you dont own, use span 
• To systematically avoid dereferencing a null pointer, use not_null
  

Pointers are not use in C-style Shader languages like GLSL/HLSL, but is critical to understand in Vulkan, and to lesser degree OpenGL.