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Typical examples of pointers are start pointers, end pointers, and stack pointers. These pointers can either be absolute (the actual physical address or a virtual address in virtual memory ) or relative (an offset from an absolute start address ("base") that typically uses fewer bits than a full address, but will usually require one additional ...
In computer science, pointer analysis, or points-to analysis, is a static code analysis technique that establishes which pointers, or heap references, can point to which variables, or storage locations. It is often a component of more complex analyses such as escape analysis. A closely related technique is shape analysis.
In computer programming, a reference is a value that enables a program to indirectly access a particular datum, such as a variable's value or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the datum, and accessing the datum is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from ...
For example, not all debuggers will be able to properly follow tagged pointers; however, this is not an issue for a debugger that is designed with tagged pointers in mind. The use of zero to represent a null pointer does not suffer from these disadvantages: it is pervasive, most programming languages treat zero as a special null value, and it ...
In computer programming, an indirection (also called a reference) is a way of referring to something using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself. The most common form of indirection is the act of manipulating a value through its memory address. For example, accessing a variable through the use of a pointer.
In computer science, reference counting is a programming technique of storing the number of references, pointers, or handles to a resource, such as an object, a block of memory, disk space, and others. In garbage collection algorithms, reference counts may be used to deallocate objects that are no longer needed.
Aliasing can occur in any language that can refer to one location in memory with more than one name (for example, with pointers).This is a common problem with functions that accept pointer arguments, and their tolerance (or the lack thereof) for aliasing must be carefully documented, particularly for functions that perform complex manipulations on memory areas passed to them.
For example, while a filename is forgeable (it is just a guessable identifier), a handle is given to a user by an external system, and thus represents not just identity, but also granted access. For example, if a program wishes to read the system password file ( /etc/passwd ) in read/write mode ( O_RDWR ), it could try to open the file via the ...