Differences between version 3 and predecessor to the previous major change of Pointer.
Other diffs: Previous Revision, Previous Author, or view the Annotated Edit History
| Newer page: | version 3 | Last edited on Saturday, September 13, 2003 2:22:34 am | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
| Older page: | version 1 | Last edited on Friday, August 22, 2003 4:07:34 pm | by StuartYeates | Revert |
@@ -1 +1,7 @@
-The [DataType] of
an address in memory. Many [
ProgrammingLanguages] have
a different type of [Pointer] for each kind of [
DataType] than can be pointed
to.
+An integer variable containing
an address in memory, ie "pointing" to it
. Some
ProgrammingLanguages even permit you to do [Pointer
] arithmetics.
+
+Fiddling with [Pointer]s is a very error prone task. Therefor, [Pointer] arithmetic is nowadays frowned upon unless you are doing low level systems programming.
+
+[Pointer]s also break type safety. Many ProgrammingLanguages attempt to alleviate this by requiring you to use
a different type of [Pointer] for each kind of DataType you want
to point to.
+
+Nowadays, if you aren't writing a kernel or hardware driver, you should be using a ProgrammingLanguage that has GarbageCollection and frees you from the arduous task of keeping track of your memory
.
