Triple pointers in C: is it a matter of style?

Question

I feel like triple pointers in C are looked at as \"bad\". For me, it makes sense to use them at times.

Starting from the basics, the single pointer

Answer 1

After two levels of indirection, comprehension becomes difficult. Moreover if the reason you're passing these triple (or more) pointers into your methods is so that they can re-allocate and re-set some pointed-to memory, that gets away from the concept of methods as "functions" that just return values and don't affect state. This also negatively affects comprehension and maintainability beyond some point.

But more fundamentally, you've hit upon one of the main stylistic objections to the triple pointer right here:

One can clearly see how a triple pointer (and beyond, really) would be required.

It's the "and beyond" that is the issue here: once you get to three levels, where do you stop? Surely it's possible to have an aribitrary number of levels of indirection. But it's better to just have a customary limit someplace where comprehensibility is still good but flexibility is adequate. Two's a good number. "Three star programming", as it's sometimes called, is controversial at best; it's either brilliant, or a headache for those who need to maintain the code later.