title: Difference between 'new' and '=' in relation to pointers
body: <p>These two pieces of code are creating very different results depending on the compiler and I don't understand why</p>
  
  <pre><code>node *active_node = new node;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>vs</p>
  
  <pre><code>node current_node;
  node *active_node;
  active_node = &amp;current_node;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From my understanding, I am manually creating a node object and assigning it to the active node pointer, same as the dynamic allocation above. However, they produce entirely different results in context of the program</p>