Cheat Engine

[Ax3l]

I don't really get what a pointer actually is good for except memory hacking shit

can someone explain in non-microsoftish|wikipedish language ?

[HomerSexual]

I'll give you the Java perspective of references (may be different for other languages)

Whenever you create an object, you often don't know how much space you'll need for that object. For instance, you could create a String that is 10 char's long or 100 char's long, and those have different space requirements.

So when you instantiate the object, it is a given is given a null pointer (it hasn't been created yet). Whenever you assign a value/new object to it, the memory is allocated and the pointer to that memory is assigned to the object in your program. So even though the memory is now in a different space, you can still just refer to the variable as you were, because the pointer's location is the same.

Does that make sense?

ps. you don't need pointers for primitives because they have a predetermined size that the compiler knows, so you can allocate upfront memory.

[lucidity]

They're just datatypes used to contain an address/handle to something else.

[Innovation]

Pointers are useful in cases where you would rather pass around a single address instead of a lot of data, while still being able to access it all by reference.

I highly suggest that you learn Java (if you haven't already) if for nothing more than to learn how important pointers are for OOP.

[atom0s]

Here's a fairly easy to follow explanation:
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/pointers/