A function pointer (or subroutine pointer) is a type of pointer supported by third-generation programming languages (such as PL/I, COBOL, Fortran 2003, dBASE dBL, and C) and object-oriented programming languages (such as C++ and D). Instead of referring to data values, a function pointer points to executable code within memory. When dereferenced, a function pointer can be used to invoke the function it points to and pass it arguments just like a normal function call. Such an invocation is also known as an "indirect" call, because the function is being invoked indirectly through a variable instead of directly through a fixed name or address. Function pointers can be used to simplify code by providing a simple way to select a function to execute based on run-time values.
Read more about Function Pointer: Simple Function Pointers, Functors, Method Pointers, In C++
Famous quotes containing the words function and/or pointer:
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)
“The hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or has visited a menagerie or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. “A boy,” says Plato, “is the most vicious of all beasts;” and in the same spirit the old English poet Gascoigne says, “A boy is better unborn than untaught.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)