.. _PointerIntro:

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.. This file is part of the OpenDSA eTextbook project. See
.. http://opendsa.org for more details.
.. Copyright (c) 2012-2020 by the OpenDSA Project Contributors, and
.. distributed under an MIT open source license.

.. avmetadata:: 
   :author: Cliff Shaffer
   :requires:
   :satisfies:
   :topic: Pointers

Pointers Chapter Introduction
=============================

The prose and images in this version originally came from 
a document written by Nick Parlante of Stanford University, and used
by permission of the author:
"`Pointers and Memory
<http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/PointersAndMemory.pdf>`_"
by Nick Parlante, Copyright 1998-2000,
Stanford CS Education Library.

This version of the book focuses on pointers in Java.
The orginal version of the material was written for C/CPP.

Our goals for this project include the following:

* A series of visualizations to support the prose
* A substantial number of interactive, small programming
  exercises. Our inspiration for these is the
  `JhavePop <http://jhave.org/jhavepop/>`_, whose authors are
  collaborators within the OpenDSA project.
* A substantial number of small exercises that show a few lines of
  code and ask the reader to manipulate a visual interface to show the
  effects of the code.
* Automated feedback including program visualizations for student
  answers to the programming exercises.