Pointers and Pointees in C | Difference between Pointers and Pointees in C | C language Pointers and Pointees concept

Pointers and Pointees in C | Difference between Pointers and Pointees in C | C language Pointers and Pointees concept

Pointers and Pointees

A pointer stores a reference to something. Unfortunately there is no fixed term for the thing that the pointer points to, and across different computer languages there is a wide variety of things that pointers point to. We use the term pointee for the thing that the pointer points to, and we stick to the basic properties of the pointer/pointee relationship which are true in all languages. The term "reference" means pretty much the same thing as "pointer" -- "reference" implies a more high-level discussion, while "pointer" implies the traditional compiled language implementation of pointers as addresses. For the basic pointer/pointee rules covered here, the terms are effectively equivalent.