---
title: "What is a pointer and does Java support pointers?"  
description: "What is a pointer and does Java support pointers?"  
author: "Aniruddh Singh"  
published: 2017-12-20  
canonical: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/31881/what-is-a-pointer-and-does-java-support-pointers  
category: "technology"  
tags: ["java programming"]  
reading_time: 1 minute  

---

# What is a pointer and does Java support pointers?

What is a [pointer](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/11/pointers) and does Java [support pointers](https://www.mindstick.com/interview/2263/what-is-a-pointer-and-does-java-support-pointers)?

## Answers

### Answer by Hemant Patel

The **Pointer** is an object, whose value points to or refers to another value stored elsewhere in the computer memory using its memory address.

Or in other words, we can say that *pointer is programming object which handles the reference of another variable value stored in the memory*.

No, **Java doesn't support Pointer**, While we use the pointer in memory, improper handling of [pointers](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/1811/objective-c-pointers) leads to memory leaks and reliability issue hence java doesn't support the usage of Pointers.

## *\*

## *Hope it's informative for you...*


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Original Source: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/31881/what-is-a-pointer-and-does-java-support-pointers

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