December 2013
Intermediate to advanced
168 pages
3h 33m
English
Overview
Pointers in C provides a resource for professionals and advanced students needing in-depth but hands-on coverage of pointer basics and advanced features. The goal is to help programmers in wielding the full potential of pointers.
In spite of its vast usage, understanding and proper usage of pointers remains a significant problem. This book's aim is to first introduce the basic building blocks such as elaborate details about memory, the compilation process (parsing/preprocessing/assembler/object code generation), the runtime memory organization of an executable and virtual memory. These basic building blocks will help both beginners and advanced readers to grasp the notion of pointers very easily and clearly. The book is enriched with several illustrations, pictorial examples, and code from different contexts (Device driver code snippets, algorithm, and data structures code where pointers are used).
Pointers in C contains several quick tips which will be useful for programmers for not just learning the pointer concept but also while using other features of the C language. Chapters in the book are intuitive, and there is a strict logical flow among them and each chapter forms a basis for the next chapter. This book contains every small aspect of pointer features in the C language in their entirety.
What you'll learn
The concept of pointers and their use with different data types
Basic and advanced features of pointers
Concepts of compilers, virtual memory, data structures, algorithms and string processing
Concepts of memory and runtime organization
Referencing and dereferencing of pointer variables
NULL pointers, Dangling pointers, VOID pointers and CONST qualifiers
Workings of dynamic data structures
Pointers to pointers
Triple, and quadrupal pointers
Self referential structures, structure padding, and cache based optimization techniques.
Who this book is for
Professional programmers, advanced students of computer science, and enthusiasts of the C language. Embedded systems programmers will also find the advanced knowledge of pointers offered in this book very helpful.
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