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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.
Notably, the delivery need not be made by the clerk who took the order. A callback need not be called by the function that accepted the callback as a parameter. Also, the delivery need not be made directly to the customer. A callback need not be to the calling function. In fact, a function would generally not pass itself as a callback.
The nested function technology allows a programmer to write source code that includes beneficial attributes such as information hiding, encapsulation and decomposition.The programmer can divide a task into subtasks which are only meaningful within the context of the task such that the subtask functions are hidden from callers that are not designed to use them.
A closure-constructing operator creates a function object from a part of the program: the part of code given as an argument to the operator is part of the function, and so is the lexical environment: the bindings of the lexically visible variables are captured and stored in the function object, which is more commonly called a closure.
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
In computer science, a dispatch table is a table of pointers or memory addresses to functions or methods. [1] Use of such a table is a common technique when implementing late binding in object-oriented programming .
How functions that take a variable number of arguments (variadic functions) are handled. Options include just passed in order (presuming the first parameter is in an obvious position) or the variable parts in an array. How return values are delivered from the callee back to the caller.
Pointers are used to pass parameters by reference. This is useful if the programmer wants a function's modifications to a parameter to be visible to the function's caller. This is also useful for returning multiple values from a function. Pointers can also be used to allocate and deallocate dynamic variables and arrays in memory. Since a ...