In case it helps, I've noticed what I'd consider a wart in C that seems to be a common stumbling block with this - including when I first learned C a couple decades ago: * when used for types, has the "opposite" effect when it's used for values/expressions.

  int* foo; // The addition of a star here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a pointer-to-int /from/ a plain int.

  int i = *foo; // The addition of a star here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a pointer-to-int /into/ a plain int (reference).

I found it much easier to keep the two straight once I segregated their use cases like this. There's a similar duality with & in C++ using references, although not quite as cleanly:

  int& foo = ...; // The addition of & here, on a type, means we're converting the type /into/ a reference /from/ a plain int.

  p = &foo; // The addition of & here, on a value, means we're converting the type /from/ a reference /into/ a pointer-to-int.

Regardless of "fault", I hope this helps :)

(edit: C++ style comments used even in 'C' code to try and prevent YN from treating stars as formatting... replaced a few instances with 'a star'... changed emphasis to use slashes because it's still eating asterisks characters...)

rule of thumb: "*" means "look up the area of memory this value points to". "&" means the reverse - "give me a reference to this area of memory".

The problem with randomly trying things with pointers is that sometimes you can accidentally fix the issue but introduce a subtle bug that's dependent on the data being stored.

I'm with you.. I'd have to read a refresher on getting started with C if I were to even do something trivial with it... I've been in higher level languages so long (C#, JavaScript, etc)... I find it helpful to understand the concepts sometimes, but would be unlikely to reach for something more low-level than go these days.

I'm sure there are several variations but I have a sort of mnemonic to remember this - that * looks like an arrowhead seen head-on and so it "points" to a value. & is then, a reference.