Write the equivalent expression for x%8?
x&7
When does the compiler not implicitly generate the address of the first element of an array?
Whenever an array name appears in an expression such as
- array as an operand of the sizeof operator
- array as an operand of & operator
- array as a string literal initializer for a character array
Then the compiler does not implicitly generate the address of the address of the first element of an array.
What is the benefit of using #define to declare a constant?
Using the #define method of declaring a constant enables you to declare a constant in one place and use it throughout your program. This helps make your programs more maintainable, because you need to maintain only the #define statement and not several instances of individual constants throughout your program.
For instance, if your program used the value of pi (approximately 3.14159) several times, you might want to declare a constant for pi as follows:
#define PI 3.14159
Using the #define method of declaring a constant is probably the most familiar way of declaring constants to traditional C programmers. Besides being the most common method of declaring constants, it also takes up the least memory. Constants defined in this manner are simply placed directly into your source code, with no variable space allocated in memory. Unfortunately, this is one reason why most debuggers cannot inspect constants created using the #define method.
How can I search for data in a linked list?
Unfortunately, the only way to search a linked list is with a linear search, because the only way a linked list’s members can be accessed is sequentially. Sometimes it is quicker to take the data from a linked list and store it in a different data structure so that searches can be more efficient.
Why should we assign NULL to the elements (pointer) after freeing them?
This is paranoia based on long experience. After a pointer has been freed, you can no longer use the pointed-to data. The pointer is said to dangle; it doesn’t point at anything useful. If you NULL out or zero out a pointer immediately after freeing it, your program can no longer get in trouble by using that pointer. True, you might go indirect on the null pointer instead, but that’s something your debugger might be able to help you with immediately. Also, there still might be copies of the pointer that refer to the memory that has been deallocated; that’s the nature of C. Zeroing out pointers after freeing them won’t solve all problems;
What is a null pointer assignment error? What are bus errors, memory faults, and core dumps?
These are all serious errors, symptoms of a wild pointer or subscript.
Null pointer assignment is a message you might get when an MS-DOS program finishes executing. Some such programs can arrange for a small amount of memory to be available “where the NULL pointer points to (so to speak). If the program tries to write to that area, it will overwrite the data put there by the compiler.
When the program is done, code generated by the compiler examines that area. If that data has been changed, the compiler-generated code complains with null pointer assignment.
This message carries only enough information to get you worried. There’s no way to tell, just from a null pointer assignment message, what part of your program is responsible for the error. Some debuggers, and some compilers, can give you more help in finding the problem.
Bus error: core dumped and Memory fault: core dumped are messages you might see from a program running under UNIX. They’re more programmer friendly. Both mean that a pointer or an array subscript was wildly out of bounds. You can get these messages on a read or on a write. They aren’t restricted to null pointer problems.
The core dumped part of the message is telling you about a file, called core, that has just been written in your current directory. This is a dump of everything on the stack and in the heap at the time the program was running. With the help of a debugger, you can use the core dump to find where the bad pointer was used.
That might not tell you why the pointer was bad, but it’s a step in the right direction. If you don’t have write permission in the current directory, you won’t get a core file, or the core dumped message.
When should a type cast be used?
There are two situations in which to use a type cast. The first use is to change the type of an operand to an arithmetic operation so that the operation will be performed properly.
The second case is to cast pointer types to and from void * in order to interface with functions that expect or return void pointers. For example, the following line type casts the return value of the call to malloc() to be a pointer to a foo structure.
struct foo *p = (struct foo *) malloc(sizeof(struct foo));
What is a null pointer?
There are times when it’s necessary to have a pointer that doesn’t point to anything. The macro NULL, defined in , has a value that’s guaranteed to be different from any valid pointer. NULL is a literal zero, possibly cast to void* or char*. Some people, notably C++ programmers, prefer to use 0 rather than NULL.
The null pointer is used in three ways:
1) To stop indirection in a recursive data structure
2) As an error value
3) As a sentinel value
courtesy:DEVFYI - Developer Resource - FYI
No comments:
Post a Comment