Why pointer is used to reference a string of characters write C plus plus statements that display the text hello using pointer to a string notation?

Answer 1

We use a pointer to reference a string because a string is an array of characters where every element is a char (or a wchar_t if using UNICODE strings). Passing arrays by value would require the entire array to be copied, but passing a pointer variable to an array only copies the pointer, which is effectively the same as passing the array by reference.

#include <iostream>

int main()

{

char * psz = "hello"; // pointer to a null-terminated string.

std::cout << psz; // pass the pointer (by value) to the insertion operator.

return( 0 );

}