How to explain C pointers (declaration vs. unary operators) to a beginner?

Question

I have had the recent pleasure to explain pointers to a C programming beginner and stumbled upon the following difficulty. It might not seem like an issue at all if you alre

Answer 1

Here you have to use, understand and explain the compiler logic, not the human logic (I know, you are a human, but here you must mimic the computer ...).

When you write

int *bar = &foo;

the compiler groups that as

{ int * } bar = &foo;

That is : here is a new variable, its name is bar, its type is pointer to int, and its initial value is &foo.

And you must add : the = above denotes an initialization not an affectation, whereas in following expressions *bar = 2; it is an affectation

Edit per comment:

Beware : in case of multiple declaration the * is only related to the following variable :

int *bar = &foo, b = 2;

bar is a pointer to int initialized by the address of foo, b is an int initialized to 2, and in

int *bar=&foo, **p = &bar;

bar in still pointer to int, and p is a pointer to a pointer to an int initialized to the address or bar.