Introduction to Pointers

The concept of a pointer is one of the most important to thoroughly understand in order to master Linux debugging. By definition, a pointer is a memory cell or a processor register that contains the address of another memory cell, as shown in the illustration below. It has its own address as any memory cell. Sometimes, a pointer is called an indirect address (whereas, a direct address is the address of a memory cell).

Iteratively, we can define another level of indirection and introduce a pointer to a pointer as a memory cell or a processor register that contains the address of another memory cell, and so on.