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532: Sidetrip

The addresses that connect arrays to class instances are called pointers. Java moves through the pointers to the instances for you automatically, so you do not need to know even that pointers exist.

C and C++ provide elaborate tools for pointer manipulation. Accordingly, proponents of those languages consider the pointer-manipulation tools to be a strength of those languages.

Explicit pointer manipulation by programmers can be a source of system-endangering bugs, because you can chase an errant pointer into the wrong part of memory, or even, in extreme cases, into some other program. Accordingly, proponents of Java consider the absence of pointer-manipulation tools to be a strength of the language.

Proponents of Java sometimes say that Java has no pointers when what they mean is that Java provides no access to pointers.