Pointers
by Frank Riccobono
An important lesson about programming in C.
Beginner C programmers are often uneasy about the use of pointers.Who can blame them, really? The first time you encounter them, they can be quite confusing. After awhile your aversion to pointers does usually subside. At first I thought that this was for the best, but then I realized that it just means we're all really sadists. Do you realize how mean you're being to your computer when you use pointers?
Imagine you're a signal sent by the CPU to access some data from a variable, but this variable happens to be a pointer being de-referenced. So you travel, fighting your way through address line after address line until finally arriving at what you think is your final destination. You knock on the door only to have a little uninteresting pointer come and and say, "I'm sorry,CPU, but your data is in another memory location."
