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In the C++ programming language, a reference is a simple reference datatype that is less powerful but safer than the pointer type inherited from C.The name C++ reference may cause confusion, as in computer science a reference is a general concept datatype, with pointers and C++ references being specific reference datatype implementations.
The relation between numbers appearing in an array declaration and the index of that array's last element also varies by language. In many languages (such as C), one should specify the number of elements contained in the array; whereas in others (such as Pascal and Visual Basic .NET ) one should specify the numeric value of the index of the ...
Differences between C and C++ linkage and calling conventions can also have subtle implications for code that uses function pointers. Some compilers will produce non-working code if a function pointer declared extern "C" points to a C++ function that is not declared extern "C". [22] For example, the following code:
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 ...
Pointers are the most primitive type of reference. Due to their intimate relationship with the underlying hardware, they are one of the most powerful and efficient types of references. However, also due to this relationship, pointers require a strong understanding by the programmer of the details of memory architecture.
A long double (eight bytes with Visual C++, sixteen bytes with GCC) will be 8-byte aligned with Visual C++ and 16-byte aligned with GCC. Any pointer (eight bytes) will be 8-byte aligned. Some data types are dependent on the implementation. Here is a structure with members of various types, totaling 8 bytes before compilation:
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].
Linked data structures are thus contrasted with arrays and other data structures that require performing arithmetic operations on pointers. This distinction holds even when the nodes are actually implemented as elements of a single array, and the references are actually array indices : as long as no arithmetic is done on those indices, the data ...