How many levels of pointers can we have?

Question

How many pointers (`*`) are allowed in a single variable? Let's consider the following example. int a = 10; int *p = &a; Similarly we can have int **q = &p; int ***r = &q; and so on. For example, int ****************zz;

Answer 1

Pointers are perhaps the single most difficult thing to master in C/C++, but there's really nothing mysterious about them. They are nothing more than variables that can hold an address. All pointers do is hold an address of an item their type. Accessing data through a pointer, called dereferencing, gets you to what is at that particular address. If that happens to be another address, you can dereference that as well. In short, no, there isn't a limit to how deep your pointers can point, the question becomes: why would you want to? As you can see, it makes it harder to understand what's going on, the deeper you go. Use a reference instead, to keep the code readable.