In computer science, a pointer is a variable whose value is a location in the computer's memory. If Rick stands in a room and points to his friend Sally, then Rick is a pointer whose value is Sally's location. A programmer must "dereference" the pointer to retrieve the object it points to. Pointers do not take up much memory (RAM). Copying a pointer to a large object is faster than copying the large object itself because only the location needs to be copied, instead of the whole object.