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In computer science, pointer analysis, or points-to analysis, is a static code analysis technique that establishes which pointers, or heap references, can point to which variables, or storage locations. It is often a component of more complex analyses such as escape analysis. A closely related technique is shape analysis.
A basic example is in the argv argument to the main function in C (and C++), which is given in the prototype as char **argv—this is because the variable argv itself is a pointer to an array of strings (an array of arrays), so *argv is a pointer to the 0th string (by convention the name of the program), and **argv is the 0th character of the ...
A HAMT is an array mapped trie where the keys are first hashed to ensure an even distribution of keys and a constant key length. In a typical implementation of HAMT's array mapped trie, each node contains a table with some fixed number N of slots with each slot containing either a nil pointer or a pointer to another node. N is commonly 32.
When an object is created, a pointer to this table, called the virtual table pointer, vpointer or VPTR, is added as a hidden member of this object. As such, the compiler must also generate "hidden" code in the constructors of each class to initialize a new object's virtual table pointer to the address of its class's virtual method table.
The Iliffe vector for a 2-dimensional array is simply a vector of pointers to vectors of data, i.e., the Iliffe vector represents the columns of an array where each column element is a pointer to a row vector.
Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Whole arrays cannot be assigned or compared using a single built-in operator. There is no "array" keyword in use or definition; instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for example month[11]. Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword. They ...
The reference graph of pointers might contain an arbitrary number of cycles; this complicates maintaining a mapping from the old unswizzled values to the new addresses. Associative arrays are useful for maintaining the mapping, while algorithms such as breadth-first search help to traverse the graph, although both of these require extra storage.
Pointer formats are known as near, far, or huge. Near pointers are 16-bit offsets within the reference segment, i.e. DS for data and CS for code. They are the fastest pointers, but are limited to point to 64 KB of memory (to the associated segment of the data type). Near pointers can be held in registers (typically SI and DI).