I am a self-taught c++ (beginner?) I have been programming for a couple of months.
I have seen, in tutorials and the such, many uses of pointers. I understand basically what they do, etc. but do you really NEED them?

Can someone give me examples of cases in which pointers are much preferred to any other type of variable access? As far as I can tell, you might as well just use the variable names.

Also, I have seen code like this:
Code:
int * my_int;
Why is the * used?

Thanks