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In the C programming language, restrict is a keyword, introduced by the C99 standard, [1] that can be used in pointer declarations. By adding this type qualifier , a programmer hints to the compiler that for the lifetime of the pointer, no other pointer will be used to access the object to which it points.
As of 2014 and C11, there are four type qualifiers in standard C: const , volatile , restrict and _Atomic – the latter has a private name to avoid clashing with user-defined names. [3] The first two of these, const and volatile , are also present in C++, and are the only type qualifiers in C++.
1 Why restrict on all pointers? 2 Alternative working example. 1 comment. 3 "restrict" optional in C++ [but not in C] an important difference? 1 comment.
Specifically, C allows a void* pointer to be assigned to any pointer type without a cast, while C++ does not; this idiom appears often in C code using malloc memory allocation, [9] or in the passing of context pointers to the POSIX pthreads API, and other frameworks involving callbacks. For example, the following is valid in C but not C++:
The element pc requires ten blocks of memory of the size of pointer to char (usually 40 or 80 bytes on common platforms), but element pa is only one pointer (size 4 or 8 bytes), and the data it refers to is an array of ten bytes (sizeof * pa == 10).
Since C++11, the C++ standard library also provides smart pointers (unique_ptr, shared_ptr and weak_ptr) which can be used in some situations as a safer alternative to primitive C pointers. C++ also supports another form of reference, quite different from a pointer, called simply a reference or reference type.
In C and C++, constructs such as pointer type conversion and union — C++ adds reference type conversion and reinterpret_cast to this list — are provided in order to permit many kinds of type punning, although some kinds are not actually supported by the standard language.
For example, Java and C# were created in part to address some of the perceived type security issues of C, and have "managed" pointers that cannot be used to create invalid references. In its original form (as described by Niklaus Wirth ), Pascal qualifies as a managed pointer language, some 30 years before either Java or C#.