dereferenced

Dereferenced is a term used to describe the result of dereferencing. In computing, to dereference means to access the value stored at the memory location addressed by a pointer or reference. The dereferenced value is the object located at that address, not the address itself.

In languages that expose pointers, dereferencing is performed with an operator. In C and C++, the unary * operator yields the object pointed to by a pointer. The expression p->field is shorthand for (*p).field when p is a pointer to a struct. Dereferencing a null or invalid pointer results in undefined behavior, often a crash or memory corruption.

Many high-level languages abstract away pointers and use references. Accessing a field or invoking a method on a reference automatically dereferences the reference, so the programmer does not write a dereference operator. In Java, C#, and similar languages, a null reference produces a runtime null reference exception when dereferenced.

Rust uses explicit dereferencing with * for references and raw pointers; dereferencing raw pointers is unsafe and requires an unsafe block. In Lisp-family languages, a function named deref returns the value stored in a place or reference, reflecting a similar idea in a different paradigm.

Conceptually, the term "dereferenced" can describe either the action or the resulting value: a dereferenced pointer or a dereferenced reference yields the underlying object rather than the address. Dereferencing is a fundamental concept in understanding memory access, pointer safety, and how different programming languages model indirect references.