Re: I thought I understood pointers.

noagbodjivictor@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I thought I knew how pointers work, but then I'm struggling with a
> code, well I happen to have written last semester in my data structure
> class. Why do we pass the pointer to the node of a binary tree by
> reference? Isn't a pointer supposed to hold the address of an object
> in memory?
> 
> Take this for example:
> ItemType findMax(TreeNode* & tree) {
>   while(tree->right != NULL)
>     tree = tree->right;
>   return tree->info;
> }
> 
> Why are we are passing the pointer tree by reference here? Don't be
> too harsh, I just happen to have forgotten a little bit...

The code seems to search for the right-most leaf in a tree. What passing
the
parameter tree by reference does for you is that the function changes the
variable so that it will point to the right-most leaf after the call.


Best

Kai-Uwe Bux