How do pointer to pointers work in C?

Question

How do pointers to pointers work in C? When would you use them?

Answer 1

There so many of the useful explanations, but I didnt found just a short description, so..

Basically pointer is address of the variable. Short summary code:

     int a, *p_a;//declaration of normal variable and int pointer variable
     a = 56;     //simply assign value
     p_a = &a;   //save address of "a" to pointer variable
     *p_a = 15;  //override the value of the variable

//print 0xfoo and 15 
//- first is address, 2nd is value stored at this address (that is called dereference)
     printf("pointer p_a is having value %d and targeting at variable value %d", p_a, *p_a); 

Also useful info can be found in topic What means reference and dereference

And I am not so sure, when can be pointers useful, but in common it is necessary to use them when you are doing some manual/dynamic memory allocation- malloc, calloc, etc.

So I hope it will also helps for clarify the problematic :)