Beginning C++, Pointer problem

I've got the basics down pat for pointers somewhat, I still don't understand the real purpose of a pointer. I know how to declare a basic pointer and difference it. I have some understanding of pointers with arrays and limited understanding of any sort of pointer arithmetic.

I have a 1,500 page book by Ivor Horton Visual C++ 2008, I purchased it because it's easy to understand and it covers most all areas including CLI / Win32 / and the other M??.

It's getting very advanced with pointers to functions and I already have limited knowledge of pointers, can someone help me out at all and clarify all this. I still don't even understand the point of pointers their really just variables that reference the value by absolute physical path rather than through the processor

Here's one of the uses of pointers (really simple). Say, you have an array of 20 int's that you initiated with values 1 through 20:

Code:

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int array[20];
#define ARRAY_SIZE (sizeof(array) / sizeof(array[0]))

for(int i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE; i++)
{
    array[i] = i + 1;
}

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and you want to pass that whole array into a function (or sometimes it's also called "a method"). In this case it will be quite "expensive" CPU-clock-wise to pass all 20 values there. That is why you pass it by reference (which is only one value), for which you get a pointer to your array inside the function:

Code:

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_tprintf(_T("The sum of all elements in array is %d"), SumOfAll(array, ARRAY_SIZE));

int SumOfAll(int* pArray, int ncbArraySize)
{
    ASSERT(pArray);
    int iSum = 0;
    for(int i = 0; i < ncbArraySize; i++)
    {
        iSum += pArray[i];
    }

    return iSum;
}

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