It was in March of 2002, at a gathering of experienced, practicing C++
programmers at The C++ Seminar in Boston (http://www.thecppseminar.com).
Dan Saks asked the 90 or so attendees which of them were not sure of
the difference between a const pointer and a pointer to const. More
than half raised their hands.

*******

Perhaps these basic issues are not so basic after all. This week's
items deal with the nature of references, const pointers and pointers to
const, and with pointers to pointers. I also threw in a discussion of
include guards. Because you never know...

References are Aliases, not Pointers
http://www.semantics.org/once_weakly/ck24_references.pdf
Const Pointers and Pointers to Const
http://www.semantics.org/once_weakly/ck25_constptr.pdf
Pointers to Pointers
http://www.semantics.org/once_weakly/ck26_ptrptr.pdf
Include Guards
http://www.semantics.org/once_weakly/ck27_includeguards.pdf

Or see all the C++ommon Knowledge items at the Once, Weakly section of
semantics.org: http://www.semantics.org/weekly.html

Best regards,

Steve