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The actual format and content of a pointer variable is dependent on the underlying computer architecture. Using pointers significantly improves performance for repetitive operations, like traversing iterable data structures (e.g. strings, lookup tables, control tables, linked lists, and tree structures). In particular, it is often much cheaper ...
A function pointer, also called a subroutine pointer or procedure pointer, is a pointer referencing executable code, rather than data. Dereferencing the function pointer yields the referenced function , which can be invoked and passed arguments just as in a normal function call.
In computer programming, an indirection (also called a reference) is a way of referring to something using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself. The most common form of indirection is the act of manipulating a value through its memory address. For example, accessing a variable through the use of a pointer.
However, also due to this relationship, pointers require a strong understanding by the programmer of the details of memory architecture. Because pointers store a memory location's address, instead of a value directly, inappropriate use of pointers can lead to undefined behavior in a program, particularly due to dangling pointers or wild pointers.
On the other hand, if a system can provide at least a memory address (pointer) sized variable thread-local, then this allows the use of arbitrarily sized memory blocks in a thread-local manner, by allocating such a memory block dynamically and storing the memory address of that block in the thread-local variable.
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.
PHP generally follows C syntax, with exceptions and enhancements for its main use in web development, which makes heavy use of string manipulation. PHP variables must be prefixed by " $ ". This allows PHP to perform string interpolation in double quoted strings, where backslash is supported as an escape character .
As of 21 January 2025 (two months after PHP 8.4's release), PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75.0% of websites where the language could be determined; PHP 7 is the most used version of the language with 47.1% of websites using PHP being on that version, while 40.6% use PHP 8, 12.2% use PHP 5 and 0.1% use PHP 4. [19]