what happens when you dereference a string in c++

Question

Why does the following code produce the output "h"? I do not understand it. Since it's dereferencing it, shouldn't it print out its memory address?

#include <iostream>
    #include <iomanip>

using namespace std;

int main() {
    cout << *("hello");

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

“ hello”的计算结果是指向字符串第一个字符的指针，对它的解引用将对该字符串的结果进行赋值。

Answer 2

A string literal ( "hello" in this case) is a array of const char of size N where N is the number of characters plus a null terminator. That array can decay to a pointer to the first element. When you dereference that pointer you now have the first element of the array, which is a character. That is why h is printed as you gave cout a character.

Answer 3

The string is saved at some memory location in the binary (when the source is compiled).

A string like "hello" is converted to a char * (pointer to char). Therefore when you dereference it, it will get you the first char of your "string".