'Restrict' Pointers
One of the new features in the recently approved C standard C99, is the restrict pointer qualifier.
This qualifier can be applied to a data pointer to indicate that, during the scope of that pointer declaration,
all data accessed through it will be accessed only through that pointer but not through any other pointer.
The 'restrict' keyword thus enables the compiler to perform certain optimizations based on the premise
that a given object cannot be changed through another pointer. Now you're probably asking yourself,
"doesn't const already guarantee that?" No, it doesn't. The qualifier const ensures that a variable cannot
be changed through a particular pointer. However, it's still possible to change the variable through a different
pointer. For example:
[code]
void f (const int* pci, int *pi;); // is *pci immutable?
{
(*pi)+=1; // not necessarily: n is incremented by 1
*pi = (*pci) + 2; // n is incremented by 2
}
int n;
f( &n, &n);//增加restrict关键字是因为这里会出问题,
//如果对两个参数都使用了restrict关键字,那么这里编译时会报错,因为一
//个地址可以通过两个指针访问了
[/code]
In this example, both pci and pi point to the same variable, n. You can't change n's value through pci
but you can change it using pi. Therefore, the compiler isn't allowed to optimize memory access for *pci
by preloading n's value. In this example, the compiler indeed shouldn't preload n because its value changes
three times during the execution of f(). However, there are situations in which a variable is accessed only
through a single pointer. For example:
[code]
FILE *fopen(const char * filename, const char * mode);
[/code]
The name of the file and its open mode are accessed through unique pointers in fopen(). Therefore,
it's possible to preload the values to which the pointers are bound. Indeed, the C99 standard revised
the prototype of the function fopen() to the following:
/* new declaration of fopen() in ; */
FILE *fopen(const char * restrict filename,
const char * restrict mode);
Similar changes were applied to the entire standard C library: printf(), strcpy() and many other functions
now take restrict pointers:
[code]
int printf(const char * restrict format, ...);
char *strcpy(char * restrict s1, const char * restrict s2);
[/code]
C++ doesn't support restrict yet. However, since many C++ compilers are also C compilers,
it's likely that this feature will be added to most C++ compilers too.