我不确定你的来源，但你描述的语言类型来自C标准:

6.5.3.2地址和间接操作符 […] 3.一元&操作符产生其操作数的地址。[…]

所以…是的，指针指向内存地址。至少这是C标准所暗示的意思。

更清楚地说，指针是保存某个地址值的变量。对象的地址(可以存储在指针中)使用一元&操作符返回。

我可以将地址“42 Wallaby Way, Sydney”存储在一个变量中(该变量将是某种“指针”，但由于这不是一个内存地址，所以我们不能正确地称之为“指针”)。您的计算机有内存桶的地址。指针存储地址的值(例如，指针存储值“42 Wallaby Way, Sydney”，这是一个地址)。

编辑:我想对Alexey Frunze的评论进行扩展。

指针到底是什么?让我们看看C标准:

6.2.5类型 […] 20.[…] 指针类型可以从函数类型或对象类型派生，称为引用类型。指针类型描述了一个对象，该对象的值提供了对所引用类型实体的引用。从引用类型T派生的指针类型有时称为“指向T的指针”。从引用类型构造指针类型称为“指针类型派生”。指针类型是一个完整的对象类型。

从本质上讲，指针存储一个值，该值提供对某些对象或函数的引用。种。指针用于存储提供对某些对象或函数引用的值，但情况并非总是如此:

6.3.2.3指针 […] 5. 整数可以转换为任何指针类型。除非像前面指定的那样，否则结果是由实现定义的，可能没有正确对齐，可能没有指向引用类型的实体，并且可能是陷阱表示。

The above quote says that we can turn an integer into a pointer. If we do that (that is, if we stuff an integer value into a pointer instead of a specific reference to an object or function), then the pointer "might not point to an entity of reference type" (i.e. it may not provide a reference to an object or function). It might provide us with something else. And this is one place where you might stick some kind of handle or ID in a pointer (i.e. the pointer isn't pointing to an object; it's storing a value that represents something, but that value may not be an address).

是的，正如Alexey Frunze所说，指针可能没有存储对象或函数的地址。有可能一个指针存储的是某种“句柄”或ID，你可以通过给指针赋某个任意整数值来做到这一点。这个句柄或ID表示什么取决于系统/环境/上下文。只要您的系统/实现能够理解这个值，您就处于良好的状态(但这取决于具体的值和具体的系统/实现)。

通常，指针存储对象或函数的地址。如果它没有存储实际的地址(到对象或函数)，则结果是实现定义的(这意味着究竟发生了什么以及指针现在表示什么取决于您的系统和实现，因此它可能是特定系统上的句柄或ID，但在另一个系统上使用相同的代码/值可能会使程序崩溃)。

结果比我想象的要长……

指针只是另一个变量，用来保存内存位置的地址(通常是另一个变量的内存地址)。

指针是一个保存内存地址的变量，而不是地址本身。但是，您可以解除对指针的引用-并访问内存位置。

例如:

int q = 10; /*say q is at address 0x10203040*/
int *p = &q; /*means let p contain the address of q, which is 0x10203040*/
*p = 20; /*set whatever is at the address pointed by "p" as 20*/

就是这样。就是这么简单。

一个演示我所说内容的程序，其输出如下:

http://ideone.com/rcSUsb

程序:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  /* POINTER AS AN ADDRESS */
  int q = 10;
  int *p = &q;

  printf("address of q is %p\n", (void *)&q);
  printf("p contains %p\n", (void *)p);

  p = NULL;
  printf("NULL p now contains %p\n", (void *)p);
  return 0;
}

把指针看作地址是一种近似。像所有的近似值一样，它有时足够有用，但也不准确，这意味着依赖它会带来麻烦。

指针就像一个地址，它指出在哪里可以找到一个对象。这种类比的一个直接限制是，并非所有指针都实际包含地址。NULL是一个指针，它不是地址。指针变量的内容实际上可以是以下三种类型之一:

对象的地址，可以被解引用(如果p包含x的地址，则表达式*p与x的值相同); 一个空指针，null是一个例子; 无效内容，不指向对象(如果p不持有有效值，则*p可以做任何事情(“未定义行为”)，导致程序崩溃是相当常见的可能性)。

此外，更准确的说法是，一个指针(如果有效且非空)包含一个地址:指针指出在哪里可以找到一个对象，但还有更多与之相关的信息。

In particular, a pointer has a type. On most platforms, the type of the pointer has no influence at runtime, but it has an influence that goes beyond the type at compile time. If p is a pointer to int (int *p;), then p + 1 points to an integer which is sizeof(int) bytes after p (assuming p + 1 is still a valid pointer). If q is a pointer to char that points to the same address as p (char *q = p;), then q + 1 is not the same address as p + 1. If you think of pointer as addresses, it is not very intuitive that the “next address” is different for different pointers to the same location.

It is possible in some environments to have multiple pointer values with different representations (different bit patterns in memory) that point to the same location in memory. You can think of these as different pointers holding the same address, or as different addresses for the same location — the metaphor isn't clear in this case. The == operator always tells you whether the two operands are pointing to the same location, so on these environments you can have p == q even though p and q have different bit patterns.

甚至在某些环境中，指针携带除地址以外的其他信息，例如类型或权限信息。作为一名程序员，你很容易在生活中不会遇到这些问题。

在某些环境中，不同类型的指针具有不同的表示形式。你可以把它想象成不同类型的地址有不同的表示。例如，一些体系结构有字节指针和字指针，或者对象指针和函数指针。

总而言之，只要记住这一点，将指针视为地址并不太糟糕

它只有有效的，非空的地址指针; 同一个位置可以有多个地址; 你不能对地址进行算术运算，地址上也没有顺序; 指针还携带类型信息。

反过来就麻烦多了。并不是所有看起来像地址的东西都可以是指针。在深层的某个地方，任何指针都表示为可以作为整数读取的位模式，并且您可以说这个整数是一个地址。但反过来说，不是每个整数都是指针。

首先有一些众所周知的限制;例如，在程序地址空间之外指定位置的整数不能是有效指针。未对齐的地址不能为需要对齐的数据类型创建有效指针;例如，在int需要4字节对齐的平台上，0x7654321不能是有效的int*值。

然而，它远远不止于此，因为当您将指针设置为整数时，您就会遇到很多麻烦。这个问题的很大一部分是优化编译器在微优化方面比大多数程序员预期的要好得多，因此他们对程序如何工作的思维模型是严重错误的。仅仅因为指针具有相同的地址并不意味着它们是等价的。例如，考虑下面的代码片段:

unsigned int x = 0;
unsigned short *p = (unsigned short*)&x;
p[0] = 1;
printf("%u = %u\n", x, *p);

您可能会期望，在sizeof(int)==4和sizeof(short)==2的普通机器上，这要么打印1 = 1?(little-endian)还是65536 = 1?(大端)。但在我的64位Linux PC上，GCC 4.4:

$ c99 -O2 -Wall a.c && ./a.out 
a.c: In function ‘main’:
a.c:6: warning: dereferencing pointer ‘p’ does break strict-aliasing rules
a.c:5: note: initialized from here
0 = 1?

在这个简单的例子中，GCC会提醒我们哪里出了问题——在更复杂的例子中，编译器可能不会注意到。由于p与&x的类型不同，改变p指向的对象不会影响&x指向的对象(除了一些定义良好的异常)。因此，编译器可以自由地将x的值保存在寄存器中，而不会在*p更改时更新该寄存器。程序解引用两个指向相同地址的指针，得到两个不同的值!

The moral of this example is that thinking of a (non-null valid) pointer as an address is fine, as long as you stay within the precise rules of the C language. The flip side of the coin is that the rules of the C language are intricate, and difficult to get an intuitive feeling for unless you know what happens under the hood. And what happens under the hood is that the tie between pointers and addresses is somewhat loose, both to support “exotic” processor architectures and to support optimizing compilers.

因此，可以将指针作为地址作为理解的第一步，但不要过于遵循这种直觉。

马克·贝西(Mark Bessey)已经说过了，但这一点需要再次强调，直到人们理解为止。

指针与变量的关系比与文字3的关系更大。

指针是一个值(地址)和类型(带有其他属性，如只读)的元组。类型(以及附加参数(如果有的话)可以进一步定义或限制上下文;如。__far ptr， __near ptr:地址的上下文是什么:堆栈，堆，线性地址，某处的偏移量，物理内存或其他。

正是type的属性使得指针算术与整数算术略有不同。

指针不是变量的反例太多了，不容忽视

fopen返回FILE指针。(变量在哪里) 堆栈指针或帧指针通常是不可寻址的寄存器 *(int *)0x1231330 = 13;——将任意整数值转换为pointer_of_integer类型，并在不引入变量的情况下写入/读取整数值

在c程序的生命周期中，会有许多其他没有地址的临时指针实例——因此它们不是变量，而是带有编译时相关类型的表达式/值。

A pointer value is an address. A pointer variable is an object that can store an address. This is true because that's what the standard defines a pointer to be. It's important to tell it to C novices because C novices are often unclear on the difference between a pointer and the thing it points to (that is to say, they don't know the difference between an envelope and a building). The notion of an address (every object has an address and that's what a pointer stores) is important because it sorts that out.

然而，标准在特定的抽象层次上进行讨论。作者所说的那些“知道地址是关于什么的”，但对C不熟悉的人，必须在不同的抽象级别上学习地址——也许是通过编写汇编语言。不能保证C实现使用与cpu操作码相同的地址表示(在本文中称为“存储地址”)，这些人已经知道。

He goes on to talk about "perfectly reasonable address manipulation". As far as the C standard is concerned there's basically no such thing as "perfectly reasonable address manipulation". Addition is defined on pointers and that is basically it. Sure, you can convert a pointer to integer, do some bitwise or arithmetic ops, and then convert it back. This is not guaranteed to work by the standard, so before writing that code you'd better know how your particular C implementation represents pointers and performs that conversion. It probably uses the address representation you expect, but it it doesn't that's your fault because you didn't read the manual. That's not confusion, it's incorrect programming procedure ;-)

简而言之，C使用了比作者更抽象的地址概念。

The author's concept of an address of course is also not the lowest-level word on the matter. What with virtual memory maps and physical RAM addressing across multiple chips, the number that you tell the CPU is "the store address" you want to access has basically nothing to do with where the data you want is actually located in hardware. It's all layers of indirection and representation, but the author has chosen one to privilege. If you're going to do that when talking about C, choose the C level to privilege!

Personally I don't think the author's remarks are all that helpful, except in the context of introducing C to assembly programmers. It's certainly not helpful to those coming from higher level languages to say that pointer values aren't addresses. It would be far better to acknowledge the complexity than it is to say that the CPU has the monopoly on saying what an address is and thus that C pointer values "are not" addresses. They are addresses, but they may be written in a different language from the addresses he means. Distinguishing the two things in the context of C as "address" and "store address" would be adequate, I think.