Understanding Pointers

Here's a fantastic explanation of pointers as posted by lassevk at StackOverflow:

Pointers is a concept that for many can be confusing at first, in particular when it comes to copying pointer values around and still referencing the same memory block.

I've found that the best analogy is to consider the pointer as a piece of paper with a house address on it, and the memory block it references as the actual house. All sorts of operations can thus be easily explained.

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Copy pointer value
Just write the address on a new piece of paper. You now have two pieces of paper that will get you to the same house, not two separate houses. Any attempts to follow the address from one paper and rearrange the furniture at that house will make it seam that the other house has been modified in the same manner, unless you can explicitly detect that it's actually just one house.

Note This is usually the concept that I have the most problem explaining to people, two pointers does not mean two objects or memory blocks.

Freeing the memory
Demolish the house and erase the address from your paper. You can then later on reuse the paper for a new address if you so wish.

Memory leak
You lose the piece of paper and cannot find the house. The house is still standing somewhere though, and when you later on want to construct a new house, you cannot reuse that spot.

Freeing the memory but keeping a (now invalid) reference
Demolish the house, erase one of the pieces of paper but you also have another piece of paper with the old address on it, when you go to the address, you won't find a house, but you might find something that resembles the ruins of one.

Perhaps you will even find a house, but it is not the house you were originally given the address to, and thus any attempts to use it as though it belongs to you might fail horribly.

Sometimes you might even find that a neighbouring address has a rather big house set up on it that occupies three address (Main Street 1-3), and your address goes to the middle of the house. Any attempts to treat that part of the large 3-address house as a single small house might also fail horribly.

Buffer overrun
You move more stuff into the house than you can possibly fit, spilling into the neighbours house or yard. When the owner of that neighbouring house later on comes home, he'll find all sorts of things he'll consider his own.

Linked lists
When you follow an address on a piece of paper, you get to a house, and at that house there is another piece of paper with a new address on it, for the next house in the chain, and so on.