Specifies that the field contains the address  of  another  field  or
  record  definition.  In PL/I, for example, POINTER fields are used to
  access based variables and buffers allocated by the system.  Although
  PL/I  does  not  associate  POINTER  fields  with  a specified record
  structure, other languages do; the optional [TO path-name]  lets  you
  connect a POINTER to a structure.