Not exactly sure what pointers are here for?

[gentle ether]

I understand pointers, and have worked with them, but I am unsure why parent has to be a pointer and files and mm have to be pointers as well.

[blissful pasture]

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[native charm]

im guessing it's because most of the time you want to modify them directly and not modify a copy

[gentle ether]

wouldn't that be the same for children?

[tender edge]

children is a list

its struct list_head children, probably a list of pointers to children

[upbeat coral]

Parent is a whole other task_struct, it has to be a pointer or else you've got an impossible situation where every task_struct contains another task_struct, making task_struct infinitely large

[gentle ether]

!solved