Term-paper Synopsis

Registration Number: 11114018

Names(s) of Student: Mukesh kumar

Roll no. RD1105A41

Term Paper on

WHY WE USE POINTERS ? ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGE OF USING POINTER S AND ITS aPPLICATION

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Estimated duration: 1 week

Nature of Paper : TECHNICAL

Paper Description:

In this topic we discuss all about Pointer With their Uses related to program,advantage,disadvantage,and it’s application.

Here we discuss some reasons why we use Pointer:-

What is a pointer?

Pointer is nothing , it is just a variable which hold the Address of another variable. For example,

consider the variable declaration: int *ptr;

ptr is the name of our variable. The '*' informs the compiler that we want a pointer variable. The int says that we intend to use our pointer variable to store the address of an integer . Such a pointer is said to "point to" an integer.

Why Have Pointers?

Pointers solve two common software problems. First, pointers allow different sections of code to share information easily. You can get the same effect by copying information back and forth, but pointers solve the problem better. Second, pointers enable complex "linked" data structures like linked lists and binary trees.

Advantage of Pointer

Pointers provide a mechanism for directly accessing and modifying objects and code in memory. Pointers are used in many programming languages for manipulating character strings, passing parameters to functions, handling arrays of data, and creating linked lists and other complex data structures.

1.) Function cannot return more than one value. But when the same function can modify many pointer variables and function as if it is returning more than one variable.
2.) In the case of arrays, we can decide the size of the array at runtime by allocating the necessary space.

Disadvantage of Pointer

1.) If sufficient memory is not available during runtime for the storage of pointers, the program may crash .
2.) If the programmer is not careful and consistent with the use of pointers, the program may crash .

A brief synopsis on the "rules" of pointers

1.) Always initialize a pointer by calling an allocator
2.) Alway check to see if the allocation request failed
3.) Always deallocate memory controlled by a pointer when done with it
4.) Never access memory that has not been allocated - pay attention to the size of arrays
5.) Never access memory that has been deallocated
6.) Do not allocate and deallocate memory with wild abandon, because that can fragment the virtual memory address space, causing future allocation requests to fail - particularly in long running programs such as web servers.

Application of pointer :

For pointer here we will only discuss the place where it is used and brief about through term paper. Accessing data by address. Some data-structures, like lists and trees, are usually implemented using pointers.

Accessing data by their address. A good example is parameter argument of function main.

1. Easy access

2. To return more than one value from a function.

3. To pass as arguments to functions.

All other related information about Pointer and its application, we will discuss throughout the term paper.

References to be used: Books (Author, title, publisher chapter / page number)

1 Let Us C,Yasavant Kanetkar

2 Programing in ANSI,E.Balagurusamy

Web references:

1. http://tinyurl.com/PointersAndArrays

2. http://tinyurl.com/PointerAndMemory

Date :- 27/02/12

Comments/ Observations by Faculty Advisor:

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Recommended: Yes  No 