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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].
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.
On many common platforms, this use of pointer punning can create problems if different pointers are aligned in machine-specific ways. 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 ...
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 to other pointers are often used in multi-dimensional arrays and arrays of struct objects. Pointers to functions ( function pointers ) are useful for passing functions as arguments to higher-order functions (such as qsort or bsearch ), in dispatch tables , or as callbacks to event handlers .
This is why the pointer placement delete functions are defined as no-operations by the Standard C++ library. Since the pointer placement new functions do not allocate any storage, there is no storage to [16] be deallocated in the event of the object's constructor throwing an exception. [11]
An allocator, A, for objects of type T must have a member function with the signature A:: pointer A:: allocate (size_type n, A < void >:: const_pointer hint = 0). This function returns a pointer to the first element of a newly allocated array large enough to contain n objects of type T; only the
Another way to create a function object in C++ is to define a non-explicit conversion function to a function pointer type, a function reference type, or a reference to function pointer type. Assuming the conversion does not discard cv-qualifiers , this allows an object of that type to be used as a function with the same signature as the type it ...