Dereferencing Arrays

You can also dereference an array, just like a regular pointer, using the regular dereferencing operator. Here are some examples (note the parentheses):

int array[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
cout << *array;         // array[0]
cout << *(array + 2);   // array[2]
cout << *array + 2;     // array[0] + 2

Similarly, you can combine dereferencing with address arithmetic, by using the subscript operator; you can use the subscript operator on both pointers and arrays. All of these expressions are true.

int array[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
int *p = array;
*array == *p;             // true
array[0] == p[0];         // also true
array[3] = *(p + 3);      // true again
4[array] = *(4 + array);  // also true

In fact, in C++, the subscript operator is just shorthand for a combination of address arithmetic along with dereferencing the resulting address.

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