I’ll get around to writing Part 2 one of the these days, I promise.

Until then let me explain that xkcd comic: those “0×3A28213A” and other strings are sample pointer values (in hexadecimal) that you might see if you had a pointer variable in a C program and printed it like this:

int x = 23;
int * p = &x;
printf(“0x%p\n”, p);

This would print “0x……..”, where the … part is some 8 digit hexadecimal number. The actual number printed out will vary depending on your system, what else is running, and the vagaries of your operating system.

The 8 digit hex number is the location in memory of the integer variable x. We also call it the “address of x,” and we say “p contains the address of x” or “p points to x.”

I have to admit I still don’t get the “pointers” comic over at xkcd…

http://xkcd.com/138/