Memory Address
In the example from the previous page, the & operator was used to create a reference variable. But it can also be used to get the memory address of a variable; which is the location of where the variable is stored on the computer.
When a variable is created in C++, a memory address is assigned to the variable. And when we assign a value to the variable, it is stored in this memory address.
To access it, use the & operator, and the result will represent where the variable is stored:
Example
string food = "Pizza";
cout << &food; // Outputs 0x6dfed4
Note: The memory address is in hexadecimal form (0x..). Note that you may not get the same result in your program.
Note: And why is it useful to know the memory address? References and Pointers (which you will learn about in the next chapter) are important in C++, because they give you the ability to manipulate the data in the computer's memory - which can reduce the code and improve the performance. These two features are one of the things that make C++ stand out from other programming languages, like Python and Java.
