On Thursday 04 March 2004 14:25, Steven T. Hatton wrote:

I have it right here.  I just want something that provides a concise yet exhaustive set of examples.  I believe there is actually a fairly limited number of fundamental ways to create and use pointers.  I'm looking for the essential minimum.

I don't think anbody could truly define such an "essential minimum" - it always depends on what kind of program you intend to write. CU -- Stefan Hundhammer Penguin by conviction. YaST2 Development SuSE Linux AG Nuernberg, Germany

Steven T. Hatton wrote:

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I would suggest you to start from pointer in C. Any decent C books should do, but I recommend "The C Programming Language" by Ritchie and Kernighan.

I have it right here. I just want something that provides a concise yet exhaustive set of examples. I believe there is actually a fairly limited number of fundamental ways to create and use pointers. I'm looking for the essential minimum.

The short answer is that a pointer can point to any type including a pointer types, classes, class members, functions and class functions. So of course int************************************************************** c; is a pointer. The answer you want is probably the following. Someone can correct me if I get it wrong. First note that the following two are identical in meaning: int const const int Then, for a type or class TYPE (which can itself be a pointer): TYPE* p // a pointer to a TYPE const TYPE* p // a pointer to a constant TYPE TYPE const* p // a pointer to a constant TYPE (hence the bit above) TYPE* const p // a constant pointer to a TYPE you can change *p but not p itself const TYPE* const p// a constant pointer to a constant TYPE TYPE const* const p// a constant pointer to a constant TYPE You can also have pointers to functions: double (*function)(double) // pointer to a function that has a double // argument and returns a double. class members: TYPE A::*d; member functions: double (A::*function)( double ) You can even have a constant pointer to a constant member function returning a constant. I can't remember offhand how to do it. I think it requires a typedef. References are easier because they are always constant. Once defined you cannot make a C++ reference refer to anything different. I think references are restricted to types, classes and pointers, but a reference to a pointer is always unnecessary: TYPE& p // a reference to a TYPE const TYPE& p // a reference to a constant TYPE TYPE const& p // a reference to a constant TYPE I believe you cannot define references to functions, members or member functions. One consequence is that C++ lets you use a pointer to a function without dereferencing it. So, using the definition above, we can write: std::cout << function( 3.1415926536 ) << std::endl; or std::cout << (*function)( 3.1415926536 ) << std::endl; Pointers to members and pointers to member functions are a bit stranger but in the right context are very useful. If B is a subclass of A, then we can assign a pointer to an object of class B to an object of class A but not the other way round. OTOH, we can assign a pointer to a member of A to a pointer to a member of B but not the other way round. -- JDL Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.

Cincai Patron wrote:

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You can also have pointers to functions:

double (*function)(double) // pointer to a function that has a double // argument and returns a double.

class members:

TYPE A::*d;

member functions:

double (A::*function)( double )

Just want to add that in C++, pointer to a non-static member function has the "this" hidden parameter.

I don't think I understood that one. :-/ -- JDL Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.

Cincai Patron wrote:

On 05 March 2004 pm 17:00, John Lamb wrote:

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Just want to add that in C++, pointer to a non-static member function has the "this" hidden parameter.

I don't think I understood that one. :-/

What I mean is, to have a pointer to a member function, we must include the object as the first parameter.

Good point. It's worthwhile emphasising that you cannot use a pointer to a member without an object (though you can declare one). I learned this one the hard way. I confused myself thinking about the equivalence of x and this->x. :-) -- JDL Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'm just going to add this to the collection: - From 11.10 of TC++PL, SE p->m == (*p).m == p[0].m In general the notion of overloading '->' frightens me, and I believe I will avoid it for the forseeable future. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAUV5VwX61+IL0QsMRAgHbAKC/629Lf0G0dBu054dkGcgbg7Hg0wCgnaJw BrGjig7wj1bQVWo+5jlg4iw= =0p+E -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 05 March 2004 08:34 pm, Jerry Feldman wrote:

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:59:47 +0800

Cincai Patron wrote:

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I would suggest you to start from pointer in C. Any decent C books should do, but I recommend "The C Programming Language" by Ritchie and Kernighan.

K&R is C, Steven is asking some very C++ specific stuff. While both C and C++ share pointer syntax, references are specific to C++.

Here are some websites I use, but I'm not thrilled with them. http://www.cpp-home.com/ http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ http://www.yrl.co.uk/~phil/stl/stl.htmlx http://www.accu.org/ http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/languages/C++/doc/doc.html http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~rlawrenc/teaching/030/Notes/

We might want to consider putting together a consolidated collection of good on-line resources. I've come across some good ones. I haven't read much of this, but the parts I have read were very enlightening. I am playing with the second part of Chapter 8 right now. http://www-aix.gsi.de/~razumov/C++annotations/cplusplus.html#toc There are some dead links here, but also some gems: http://www.fz-juelich.de/zam/cxx/extern.html STH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAS13ywX61+IL0QsMRAm5BAKDYvz+76j5XV8tNysyJYPxvs23wFACg8dvL ai8bVua3r6Y7IIo/tCl6vxY= =KG6t -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----