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Many languages have explicit pointers or references. Reference types differ from these in that the entities they refer to are always accessed via references; for example, whereas in C++ it's possible to have either a std:: string and a std:: string *, where the former is a mutable string and the latter is an explicit pointer to a mutable string (unless it's a null pointer), in Java it is only ...
In response to this, many modern high-level computer languages (for example Java) do not permit direct access to memory using addresses. Also, the safe C dialect Cyclone addresses many of the issues with pointers. See C programming language for more discussion. The void pointer, or void*, is
The set of basic C data types is similar to Java's. Minimally, there are four types, char , int , float , and double , but the qualifiers short , long , signed , and unsigned mean that C contains numerous target-dependent integer and floating-point primitive types. [ 15 ]
In many languages (e.g., the C programming language) deleting an object from memory explicitly or by destroying the stack frame on return does not alter associated pointers. The pointer still points to the same location in memory even though that location may now be used for other purposes. A straightforward example is shown below:
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.
For example, Java and C# were created in part to address some of the perceived type security issues of C, and have "managed" pointers that cannot be used to create invalid references. In its original form (as described by Niklaus Wirth ), Pascal qualifies as a managed pointer language, some 30 years before either Java or C#.
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 C++, pointers can be used to manipulate specific memory locations, ... An example comparing C++ and Java exists in Wikibooks. Performance