this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Actually
void*
just points to anything, with no regard to the type of that thing. Pointing to the void is more accurately described byNULL
pointer.Fair, though I guess my interpretation was that
void*
is kind of like a black hole in that anything can fall into it in an unsettling way that loses information about what it was?It erases the type of what your pointing at. All you have is a memory location, in contrast to
int*
which is a memory location of an int"Allow me to combine the worst feature of strong typing with the worst feature of dynamic typing".
Result: one of the most if not the most popular programming languages.
But we need dynamic types!
...hold my beer...
So, when I want the void to point back at me, do I have to loop over void* or over NULL?
And how many iterations?
For the void to point back at you just dereference the NULL pointer
as many iterations as it takes
In other words,
void
refers to the typing of the pointer, not a particular value that might be present at its target.(But I can see how someone might find it confusing.)