Warnings

As already remarked, pointers allow direct access to the computer memory, and hence deliver an enormous power into the programmer's hands.

• Pointers allow you to access memory directly, hence can be very dangerous
• Attempted memory corruption results in ``segmentation fault'' error and abort, or garbage output, or unpredictable behaviour
• Most common dangers:
  1. writing to memory outside bounds
     

     char buffer[] = "LeoLiberti";
     char* bufPtr = buffer;
     while(*bufPtr != ' ') {
     *bufPtr = ' ';
     bufPtr++;
     }

  2. deallocating memory more than once
• Pointer bugs are usually very hard to track