The dereference operator or indirection operator, sometimes denoted by "*" (i.e. an asterisk), is a unary operator (i.e. one with a single operand) found in C-like languages that include pointer variables. It operates on a pointer variable, and returns an <a href="/wiki/Value_(computer_science)#lrvalue" title="Value (computer science)">l-value</a> equivalent to the value at the pointer address. This is called "dereferencing" the pointer. For example, the C code assigned 1 to variable <b>x</b> by using the dereference operator and a pointer to the variable <b>x</b>.