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Furthermore, pointers of different sizes can alias accesses to the same memory, causing problems that are unchecked by the compiler. Even when data size and pointer representation match, however, compilers can rely on the non-aliasing constraints to perform optimizations that would be unsafe in the presence of disallowed aliasing.
Many languages have explicit pointers or references. Reference types differ from these in that the entities they refer to are always accessed via references; for example, whereas in C++ it's possible to have either a std:: string and a std:: string *, where the former is a mutable string and the latter is an explicit pointer to a mutable string (unless it's a null pointer), in Java it is only ...
In C++ pointers to non-static members of a class can be defined. If a class C has a member T a then &C::a is a pointer to the member a of type T C::*. This member can be an object or a function. [16] They can be used on the right-hand side of operators .* and ->* to access the corresponding member.
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.
C# has and allows pointers to selected types (some primitives, enums, strings, pointers, and even arrays and structs if they contain only types that can be pointed [14]) in unsafe context: methods and codeblock marked unsafe. These are syntactically the same as pointers in C and C++. However, runtime-checking is disabled inside unsafe blocks.
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].
The d-pointer pattern is one of the implementations of the opaque pointer. It is commonly used in C++ classes due to its advantages (noted below). A d-pointer is a private data member of the class that points to an instance of a structure. This method allows class declarations to omit private data members, except for the d-pointer itself. [6]
Note that, when there is a data member that is a pointer or reference to another object, then it is possible to mutate the object pointed to or referenced only within a non-const method. C++ also provides abstract (as opposed to bitwise) immutability via the mutable keyword, which lets a member variable be changed from within a const method.