Pointers

The CARM Compiler supports the declaration of variable pointers. Pointers may be used to perform all operations available in standard C. A pointer is a 32-bit unsigned integer value that represent a memory address in the 4 GByte address space of the ARM device. There is no difference between a data or a function pointer. Pointers may be freely cast to int and long types with no loss of address information.

You may cast an integer data type into a pointer and a pointer into an integer data type. Type cast operations between pointers and integer data types are performed as follows:

Convert From	Convert To	Description
signed long long unsigned long long	pointer	The high-order four bytes of the long long type are discarded. The low-order four bytes are used as the pointer value.
signed int unsigned int signed long unsigned long	pointer	The four bytes of the int or long type are used as the pointer value.
unsigned char unsigned short	pointer	The byte or bytes of the char or short are zero-extended to fill the four bytes of the pointer.
signed char signed short	pointer	The byte or bytes of the char or short are sign-extended to fill the four bytes of the pointer.
pointer	signed long long unsigned long long	The four bytes of the pointer are zero-extended to fill the eight bytes of the long long.
pointer	signed int unsigned int signed long unsigned long	The four bytes of the pointer are used as the int or long value.
pointer	signed short unsigned short	The high-order two bytes of the pointer are discarded. The low-order two bytes are used as the short value.
pointer	signed char unsigned char	The high-order three bytes of the pointer are discarded. The low-order byte is used as the char value.

The CARM Compiler provides two standard types you may use with pointers.

size_t is defined as unsigned int and holds the maximum size of an object.
ptrdiff_t is defined as signed int and holds the difference between two pointers to elements of the same array.