void Pointers Definition
Explore how void pointers provide a flexible and type-independent way to manage memory in C. Understand their role in implementing generic functions like memcpy, learn about their restrictions, and master the use of typecasting to safely dereference and manipulate data.
We'll cover the following...
Introduction
Up until this point, we’ve worked with various pointer types, such as:
- Pointers to
int - Pointers to
float - Pointers to
char - Pointers to custom data types, defined using structures
One limiting factor was that different pointer types are not often compatible. For example, an int pointer can’t usually point to a floating point number. This fact introduces an interesting problem. The problem is what happens when we want to write a function that doesn’t depend on the data type, as the processing is identical. We’d have to create multiple almost identical functions, where the only difference is the data type of the arguments.
For example, let’s look at the memcpy function. Its purpose is to copy ...