GoForSmoke:
But forum posts are no substitute for reading from books or sites and practicing what is shown there.
That's just it... I've been reading C books and sites for years now. I guess I haven't been reading the right books and sites since it seems like for every book or site where a pointer is used, it's not the only way to skin that particular cat.
Don't think I'm hating on C or pointers because I don't understand them. But it's looking to me like pointers are a lot like recursion (if you're smart enough to do recursion, then by definition you're smart enough to find a way to do the same thing without recursion).
I'll admit using pointers for function calls dealing with strings and structures appear to be a good use of pointers, but it seems to me that's mainly just a band-aid for C's inability to return a string or struct from a function.