The Basics And Pitfalls Of Pointers In C

Table Of Content

• Hackaday Podcast Episode 268: RF Burns, Wireless Charging Sucks, And Barnacles Grow On Flaperons
• C standard library
• Used for computationally-intensive libraries
• Arrays
• Rationale for use in systems programming
• Fast-growing Zig tops Stack Overflow survey for highest-paid programming language
• Relations to other languages

The members of a structure are stored in consecutive locations in memory, although the compiler is allowed to insert padding between or after members (but not before the first member) for efficiency or as padding required for proper alignment by the target architecture. The size of a structure is equal to the sum of the sizes of its members, plus the size of the padding. The application programming interface (API) of the C standard library is declared in a number of header files. Each header file contains one or more function declarations, data type definitions, and macros.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 268: RF Burns, Wireless Charging Sucks, And Barnacles Grow On Flaperons

Wide characters are most commonly either 2 bytes (using a 2-byte encoding such as UTF-16) or 4 bytes (usually UTF-32), but Standard C does not specify the width for wchar_t, leaving the choice to the implementor. Microsoft Windows generally uses UTF-16, thus the above string would be 26 bytes long for a Microsoft compiler; the Unix world prefers UTF-32, thus compilers such as GCC would generate a 52-byte string. A 2-byte wide wchar_t suffers the same limitation as char, in that certain characters (those outside the BMP) cannot be represented in a single wchar_t; but must be represented using surrogate pairs. The _Thread_local (thread_local in C++, since C23, and in earlier versions of C if the header is included) storage class specifier, introduced in C11, is used to declare a thread-local variable. The extern storage class specifier indicates that the storage for an object has been defined elsewhere.

C standard library

Unix-like operating systems generally cannot function if the C library is erased. This is true for applications which are dynamically as opposed to statically linked. Further, the kernel itself (at least in the case of Linux) operates independently of any libraries. The most common C library is the C standard library, which is specified by the ISO and ANSI C standards and comes with every C implementation (implementations which target limited environments such as embedded systems may provide only a subset of the standard library). This library supports stream input and output, memory allocation, mathematics, character strings, and time values.

Used for computationally-intensive libraries

The influence of The C Programming Language on programmers, a generation of whom first worked with C in universities and industry, has led many to accept the authors' programming style and conventions as recommended practice, if not normative practice. For example, the coding and formatting style of the programs presented in both editions of the book is often referred to as "K&R style" or the "One True Brace Style" and became the coding style used by convention in the source code for the Unix and Linux kernels. Appendix A, the reference manual, is not the standard, but our attempt to convey the essentials of the standard in a smaller space.

Because they are typically unchecked, a pointer variable can be made to point to any arbitrary location, which can cause undesirable effects. In general, C is permissive in allowing manipulation of and conversion between pointer types, although compilers typically provide options for various levels of checking. Some other programming languages address these problems by using more restrictive reference types. Unix-like systems typically have a C library in shared library form, but the header files (and compiler toolchain) may be absent from an installation so C development may not be possible. The C library is considered part of the operating system on Unix-like systems; in addition to functions specified by the C standard, it includes other functions that are part of the operating system API, such as functions specified in the POSIX standard. The C library functions, including the ISO C standard ones, are widely used by programs, and are regarded as if they were not only an implementation of something in the C language, but also de facto part of the operating system interface.

Array types in C are traditionally of a fixed, static size specified at compile time. However, it is also possible to allocate a block of memory (of arbitrary size) at run-time, using the standard library's malloc function, and treat it as an array. Most of the recently reserved words begin with an underscore followed by a capital letter, because identifiers of that form were previously reserved by the C standard for use only by implementations. Since existing program source code should not have been using these identifiers, it would not be affected when C implementations started supporting these extensions to the programming language. Some standard headers do define more convenient synonyms for underscored identifiers.

Rationale for use in systems programming

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The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as L to indicate that C11 support is available. The original C language provided no built-in functions such as I/O operations, unlike traditional languages such as COBOL and Fortran.[citation needed] Over time, user communities of C shared ideas and implementations of what is now called C standard libraries. Many of these ideas were incorporated eventually into the definition of the standardized C language. On Unix-like systems, the authoritative documentation of the API is provided in the form of man pages. On most systems, man pages on standard library functions are in section 3; section 7 may contain some more generic pages on underlying concepts (e.g. man 7 math_error in Linux).

In void setArray(int array[static 4], int index, int value) the first parameter must be a pointer to the first element of an array of length at least 4. It is also possible to add qualifiers (const, volatile and restrict) to the pointer type that the array is converted to by putting them between the brackets. Structures, unions and arrays can be initialized in their declarations using an initializer list. Unless designators are used, the components of an initializer correspond with the elements in the order they are defined and stored, thus all preceding values must be provided before any particular element's value. The original C standard specified only minimal functions for operating with wide character strings; in 1995 the standard was modified to include much more extensive support, comparable to that for char strings. The relevant functions are mostly named after their char equivalents, with the addition of a "w" or the replacement of "str" with "wcs"; they are specified in , with containing wide-character classification and mapping functions.

Relations to other languages

The int type specifiers which are commented out could be omitted in K&R C, but are required in later standards. To make sure we’re on the same page, we start with a recap of pointer syntax, how to assign and use them, and how not to use them. Expressions before a sequence point are always evaluated before those after a sequence point. In the case of short-circuit evaluation, the second expression may not be evaluated depending on the result of the first expression. For example, in the expression (a() || b()), if the first argument evaluates to nonzero (true), the result of the entire expression cannot be anything else than true, so b() is not evaluated. Similarly, in the expression (a() && b()), if the first argument evaluates to zero (false), the result of the entire expression cannot be anything else than false, so b() is not evaluated.

Newline indicates the end of a text line; it need not correspond to an actual single character, although for convenience C treats it as one. ANSI, like other national standards bodies, no longer develops the C standard independently, but defers to the international C standard, maintained by the working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. National adoption of an update to the international standard typically occurs within a year of ISO publication.

A standards-compliant C program written with portability in mind can be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its source code. C supports the use of pointers, a type of reference that records the address or location of an object or function in memory. Pointers can be dereferenced to access data stored at the address pointed to, or to invoke a pointed-to function.

Some compilers warn if an object with enumerated type is assigned a value that is not one of its constants. However, such an object can be assigned any values in the range of their compatible type, and enum constants can be used anywhere an integer is expected. For this reason, enum values are often used in place of preprocessor #define directives to create named constants.