I don't understand about pointers and &

Question

I understand how to use, but not why they exist? Why I need pointers and that stuff to locate an address?

Answer 1

& is a special operator that returns the address of a given variable. The * operator helps retrieve the value stored in the pointer variable. For example,
a = 8;
int *ptr = &a;

Here, the pointer stores the location of the variable a, so that any change in a is reflected in *ptr and vice versa.

Answer 2

Pointer in c++ are used in data structures