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 w

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.