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A free list (or freelist) is a data structure used in a scheme for dynamic memory allocation. It operates by connecting unallocated regions of memory together in a linked list, using the first word of each unallocated region as a pointer to the next. It is most suitable for allocating from a memory pool, where all objects have the same size ...
For example, adding 1 to a pointer to 4-byte integer values will increment the pointer's pointed-to byte-address by 4. This has the effect of incrementing the pointer to point at the next element in a contiguous array of integers—which is often the intended result.
In C++, a class can overload all of the pointer operations, so an iterator can be implemented that acts more or less like a pointer, complete with dereference, increment, and decrement. This has the advantage that C++ algorithms such as std::sort can immediately be applied to plain old memory buffers, and that there is no new syntax to learn ...
"Ordered" means that the elements of the data type have some kind of explicit order to them, where an element can be considered "before" or "after" another element. This order is usually determined by the order in which the elements are added to the structure, but the elements can be rearranged in some contexts, such as sorting a list. For a ...
Smart pointers can facilitate intentional programming by expressing, in the type, how the memory of the referent of the pointer will be managed. For example, if a C++ function returns a pointer, there is no way to know whether the caller should delete the memory of the referent when the caller is finished with the information.
Any class that fulfills the allocator requirements can be used as an allocator. In particular, a class A capable of allocating memory for an object of type T must provide the types A::pointer, A::const_pointer, A::reference, A::const_reference, and A::value_type for generically declaring objects and references (or pointers) to objects of type T.
Although function pointers in C and C++ can be implemented as simple addresses, so that typically sizeof(Fx)==sizeof(void *), member pointers in C++ are sometimes implemented as "fat pointers", typically two or three times the size of a simple function pointer, in order to deal with virtual methods and virtual inheritance [citation needed].
Objects that are shared but not owned can be accessed via a reference, raw pointer, or iterator (a conceptual generalisation of pointers). However, by the same token, C++ provides native ways for users to opt-into such functionality: C++11 provides reference counted smart pointers, via the std::shared_ptr class, enabling automatic shared memory ...