Unnecessarily confusing example in Pointers chapter of docs

[snej]

I'm quite experienced with pointers and references (in languages like C, C++, Java, Go, etc.) but this example in the Pointers chapter confused me:

fn main() {
    let x = &mut 5;

    if *x < 10 {
        let y = &x;

        println!("Oh no: {}", y);
        return;
    }

    *x -= 1;

    println!("Oh no: {}", x);
}

I was confused by &mut 5 (taking the address of a numeric literal is a syntax error in languages I'm used to, and being able to mutate the literal is even weirder!), and also by the fact that y ends up being a pointer to a pointer.

It got clearer when I figured out that neither of those things is relevant. In fact the type of x is a red herring — it doesn't matter in the example (and the following one) what the type of x is, just that we both create a reference to it and modify it.

I think changing x to an integer would clarify the example:

fn main() {
    let mut x = 5;

    if x < 10 {
        let y = &x;
        println!("Oh no: {}", y);
        return;
    }

    x -= 1;

    println!("Oh no: {}", x);
}

[jxcl]

@steveklabnik The PR for this issue has also been merged.