To access the thing to which a poiNTer poiNTs, i.e. to follow the poiNTer. E.g. in C, the declarations iNT i iNT *p = &i declare i as an iNTeger and p as a poiNTer to iNTeger. p is initialised to poiNT at i ("&i" is the address of i - the inverse of "*"). The expression *p dereferences p to yield i as an lvalue, i.e. something which can appear either on the left of an assignmeNT or anywhere an iNTeger expression is valid. Thus *p = 17 would set i to 17. *p++ is not the same as i++ however since it is parsed as *(p++), i.e. incremeNT p (which would be an invalid thing to do if it was poiNTing to a single iNT, as in this example) then dereference p' s old value. The C operator "->" also dereferences its left hand argumeNT which is assumed to poiNT to a structure or union of which the right hand argumeNT is a member. At first sight the word "dereference" might be thought to mean "to cause to stop referring" but its meaning is well established in jargon. (1998-12-15)
