The Concept of a Reference
Explore the concept of references and pointers in D programming. Understand how ref variables in loops and functions modify data directly. Learn about reference types like classes, slices, and associative arrays, and their implementation through pointers. This lesson helps you grasp essential low-level memory access techniques in D for more effective system programming.
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Pointers
Pointers are variables that provide access to other variables. The value of a pointer is the address of the variable that it provides access to.
Pointers can point at any type of variable, object, and even other pointers. In this chapter, we will refer to all of these simply as variables.
Pointers are low-level features of microprocessors. They are an important part of system programming.
The syntax and semantics of pointers in D are inherited directly from C. Although pointers are notoriously the most difficult feature of C to comprehend, they should not be as difficult in D. This is because other features of D that are semantically close to pointers are more useful in situations where pointers would have to be used in other ...