What do people find difficult about C pointers?

Question

From the number of questions posted here, it's clear that people have some pretty fundemental issues when getting their heads around pointers and pointer arithmetic.I'm curious to know why. They've never really caused me major problems (although I first learned about them back in the Neolithic). In order to write better answers to these questions, I'd like to know what people find difficult.So, if you're struggling with pointers, or you recently were but suddenly "got it", what were the aspects of pointers that caused you problems?

Answer 1

I have found that students struggle with the concept because it is just too abstract.

Using memory maps or even silly little mailboxes have proven to be very effective when

understanding lessons of pointers.

The second problem is, in and of itself, Java.

Since the use of pointers has been all but deprecated in Java, students do

not have to work with pointers.

Then when something in C/C++ comes along they have ZERO EXPOSURE to it.

Sadly and finally, a lot of these colleges do not offer courses in C++ any longer.

They go right from C programming into java with little to no exposure to classes,

member functions and variables, and OOP, let alone pointers.