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ECP - Function Pointer Tutorials

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Please post your recommendations of Function Pointer related C/C++ tutorials and educational sites here.

A function pointer is a variable that stores the address of a function that can later be called through that function pointer. This is useful because functions encapsulate behavior. For instance, every time you need a particular behavior such as drawing a line, instead of writing out a bunch of code, all you need to do is call the function. But sometimes you would like to choose different behaviors at different times in essentially the same piece of code. Read on for concrete examples.


Removing the Mystery of Function Pointers
 

Function Pointers provide some extremely interesting, efficient and elegant programming techniques. You can use them to replace switch/if-statements, to realize your own late-binding or to implement callbacks. Unfortunately - probably due to their complicated syntax - they are treated quite stepmotherly in most computer books and documentations. If at all, they are addressed quite briefly and superficially. They are less error prone than normal pointers cause you will never allocate or deallocate memory with them. All you've got to do is to understand what they are and to learn their syntax. But keep in mind: Always ask yourself if you really need a function pointer. It's nice to realize one's own late-binding but to use the existing structures of C++ may make your code more readable and clear. One aspect in the case of late-binding is runtime: If you call a virtual function, your program has got to determine which one has got to be called. It does this using a V-Table containing all the possible functions. This costs some time each call and maybe you can save some time using function pointers instead of virtual functions. Maybe not ... BTW: Modern compilers are very good! With my Borland Compiler the time I was able to save calling a virtual function which multiplies two floats was about 2 percent.



The Function Pointer Tutorials
 

Function Pointers provide some extremely interesting, efficient and elegant programming techniques. You can use them to replace switch/if-statements, to realize your own late-binding or to implement callbacks. Unfortunately – probably due to their complicated syntax – they are treated quite stepmotherly in most computer books and documentations. If at all, they are addressed quite briefly and superficially. They are less error prone than normal pointers cause you will never allocate or de-allocate memory with them. All you’ve got to do is to understand what they are and to learn their syntax.


**broken link removed**
 

You can create pointers to functions as well as to variables. Function pointers can be tricky, however, and caution is advised in using them.

Function pointers allow you to pass functions as a parameters to another function. This enables you to give the latter function a choice of functions to call. That is, you can plug in a new function in place of an old one simply by passing a different parameter. This technique is sometimes called indirection or vectoring.



GNU C Programming - Function Pointer Tutorial
 

The topic of function pointers may seem advanced to those who have never tried to use them, but they get easy very quickly! In this tutorial, I will teach the reader how to declare, assign, and call pointers to functions and pointers to functions that are members of a class. For those who do not know what pointers are or how to create them, go to this tutorial to learn how to do that.

If you do know about pointers, please continue! The first thing we need to know about pointers to functions is that they are pointers. They are not actually functions, and they do not have a body. A function pointer is simply an address in the form of a function.


Function Pointer Tutorial
 

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