Interesting article, but I'm afraid your comments about C++ are not technically accurate:

It can be easily proven that this is not the case. In C++ a variable has both an address and storage space upon declaration. In debug mode that storage is initialized with a distinctive pattern (such as 0xdd, depending on compiler version.) In release mode, it will contain whatever random garbage happened to be in memory.

This is true of both pointer types and non pointer types (in the strictest sense) though pointer types require a bit more explanation: A pointer type, as its name suggests, is a variable that stores an address that points to something else.

When a pointer is declared, it is true that no memory has been allocated to store anything of the type it points to, that space must be separately allocated, and its address is assigned to the pointer. Even so, at declaration a pointer type does have an address of it's own, and enough memory to store a pointer has been allocated for it.

cout.flags(ios::hex);

int i; // sizeof(int) bytes allocated on the stack

int *p; // size of a memory address allocated on the stack

cout << i << endl; // garbage value

cout << (int)&i << endl; // valid mem location

cout << (int)p << endl; // garbage value

cout << *p << endl; // access fault! can't dereference invalid location

cout << (int)&p << endl; // valid mem location (double indirection)

p = &i; // storage for an int now assigned to pointer

cout << *p << endl; // value is still garbage, but valid to defererence

*p = 1; // assigning value to mem pointed to

cout << i << endl; // pop quiz: what will this output be? 🙂

-Mark McGinty