Pointers

When a memory address is used as a link between nodes of a data structure it is sometimes called a pointer. In some higher level languages (such as "C") a pointer is exactly the same as a main memory address. Other languages (such as object oriented languages) require a pointer to have more features than a raw memory address can provide. In these languages a "pointer" is more elaborate than a memory address.

For this course, let us regard "pointer" and "memory address" as exactly the same. Sometimes the word "reference" is used for the link to a node. But in Java (for example), an object reference is not a raw memory address.