Pointers and Polymorphism - both

[Texedova]

Hello,
Look, this is kind of a dumb question to read and no i am not a dumb-ass. What exactly is the point of Pointers and Polymorphism? Please help i am stressing over this. Thank you sooooooo much in advance :)

[tcs]

Your question is really unspecific. So it is difficult to find an answer in short. May be you'll find it here and there http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/polymorphism/ and there http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/pointers/.

[Peter87]

If you have a pointer (or reference) to some type T, that pointer can be use to point to an object of type T or an object of a type that is derived from T.

[MiiNiPaa]

Polymorphism:
For example yo can have two functions:
power(int base, int exp) and power(double base, double exp)
Former would use simple multiplication in loop, while second will use more complex and slow approach.
Then when you write power(a, b) you do not specify which function to call. The best function for current case will be chosen depending on a and b types.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_%28computer_science%29

[Peter87]

There are different kinds of polymorphism. The one that is usually meant and I think OP was asking about is called Subtype polymorphism in the link posted by MiiNiPaa. The MiiNiPaa explained the Parametric polymorphism but I don't think that has much to do with pointers.

[D4S8vCM9]

Maybe the OP's "and" in the question wasn't the boolean "and" but just a conjugation and the OP want's to know about both: Polymorphism and Pointers, but each as own term??

So tcs answer was the best :-D

[mutexe]

The classic Shape/area example :)
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/cplusplus/cpp_polymorphism.htm