Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In computer programming, indirection is the act of manipulating a value through its address. For example, accessing a variable through the use of a pointer to it is a type of indirection (often called dereferencing). In the C/C++ programming languages, the asterisk (*) is the indirection operator. When placed before a pointer, it refers to the value pointed to. A stored pointer that exists to provide a reference to an object by double indirection is called an indirection node. See also: Handle This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.