Editing Data type (section)

===Pointers and references===
{{Main|Reference (computer science)}}
The main non-composite, derived type is the [[pointer (computer programming)|pointer]], a data type whose value refers directly to (or "points to") another value stored elsewhere in the [[computer memory]] using its [[Memory address|address]]. It is a primitive kind of [[reference (computer science)|reference]]. (In everyday terms, a page number in a book could be considered a piece of data that refers to another one). Pointers are often stored in a format similar to an integer; however, attempting to dereference or "look up" a pointer whose value was never a valid memory address would cause a program to crash. To ameliorate this potential problem, a pointer type is typically considered distinct from the corresponding integer type, even if the underlying representation is the same.