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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.
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.
It is also said that a pointer points to a datum [in memory] when the pointer's value is the datum's memory address. More generally, a pointer is a kind of reference, and it is said that a pointer references a datum stored somewhere in memory; to obtain that datum is to dereference the pointer. The feature that separates pointers from other ...
The call to d->f1() passes a B1 pointer as a parameter. The call to d->f2() passes a B2 pointer as a parameter. This second call requires a fixup to produce the correct pointer. The location of B2::f2 is not in the virtual method table for D. By comparison, a call to d->fnonvirtual() is much simpler: (*
In the C programming language, struct is the keyword used to define a composite, a.k.a. record, data type – a named set of values that occupy a block of memory. It allows for the different values to be accessed via a single identifier, often a pointer.
Pointer formats are known as near, far, or huge. Near pointers are 16-bit offsets within the reference segment, i.e. DS for data and CS for code. They are the fastest pointers, but are limited to point to 64 KB of memory (to the associated segment of the data type). Near pointers can be held in registers (typically SI and DI).
Smart pointers are opaque data structures that act like pointers but can only be accessed through particular methods. A handle is an abstract reference, and may be represented in various ways. A common example are file handles (the FILE data structure in the C standard I/O library), used to abstract file content.
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.