Definition of "pointerless"

We will see, however, that the pointerless techniques are seldom satisfactory. Implementations of trees tend to be more complex than those of ordered lists.

1989, Allen Kent, James G Williams, Rosalind Kent, Encyclopedia of Microcomputers: Volume 4

The list representation is a pointerless representation that facilitates sequential access but is inefficient for random access to specific image elements.

1992, Giorgio Gambosi, Michel O Scholl, Hans-Werner Six, Geographic database management systems: workshop proceedings, Capri, Italy

But we can't use function pointers as we would in C++, and not just for the ideological reason that it doesn't enter into the spirit of the brave new pointerless world of the CLR.

2003, Ian Griffiths, Matthew Adams, .NET Windows forms in a nutshell, page 18