What do pointer values actually represent?

[hackerNovitiate]

Hi all,

When debugging or experimenting with low-level code, I sometimes examine pointer values like this:

printf("Pointer points to %p\n", (void*)myPtr);

printf("Pointer points to %p\n", (void*)myPtr);

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Usually, I'm only interested in confirming that two pointers have the same values, confirming that two pointers have different values, or finding the "positional differences" between pointer values. Thus, I've never needed to understand what the absolute values of those pointers are.

However, I'm now curious as to what those values actually represent... If I get the message "Pointer points to 006CBAC0", does 006CBAC0 refer to a unique location in RAM? If two different, simultaneously-running processes attempt to dereference 006CBAC0, will they read the same physical location?