Introduction
One very confusing facet of the now obsolete Managed Extensions to C++ was its pointer usage syntax, whereT*
could be a native pointer, a managed reference or an interior pointer. In the new C++/CLI syntax, managed references use the ^
punctuator (called hat by Redmondians and mistakenly called cap by me the first time I saw it), thereby avoiding any confusion with a native pointer. With probably the same intentions, Herb Sutter and team have provided us with a far more intuitive template-style syntax for representing interior pointers, similar to the new syntax for representing CLI arrays. In this article, I'll talk about what interior pointers are, where they can be used and how they can be used.
What are interior pointers?
Interior pointers are essentially pointers into the CLI heap (needn't always point to the CLI heap though) that point to managed objects or members of managed objects. The basic problem with using a native pointer to point to a managed object or a member-object of a managed object is that the Garbage Collector might move the object around in the CLI heap during a GC/Memory-Compaction cycle. Thus, a managed object at 0x00BB0010
might end up at 0x00BBC010
after a GC cycle, and you can imagine what'd happen if we had a native pointer p
pointing to the managed object before the GC cycle occurs. The pointer p
would continue pointing to0x00BB0010
(the location of the managed object before the GC cycle), but now the managed object is at0x00BBC010
, and 0x00BB0010
is just a random location in the CLI heap that might later be occupied by some other object. If the native pointer p
is now used to modify the contents of 0x00BB0010
, we are basically corrupting data - most undesirable as you can see!
That's where interior pointers come into play. The CLR knows about interior pointers and every time the Garbage Collector relocates an object pointed to by an interior pointer variable, the CLR automatically updates the value of the interior pointer to reflect the new location. So we can continue using the interior pointer and yet be totally oblivious as to the GC moving our pointed-to object around the CLI heap. Here's some code to see this in action :-
Here's our test class with an int
member.
ref class Test
{
public:
int m_i;
};
Here's a function to try and fill up the CLI heap's Generation-0 memory. [You might have to modify the loop-count (10,000 for me) to other values if you are not getting the desired effect]
void DoLotsOfAllocs()
{
for(int i=0; i<10000; i++)
{
gcnew Test();
}
}
Here's the test code.
void _tmain()
{
DoLotsOfAllocs();
Test^ t = gcnew Test();
t->m_i = 99;
interior_ptr<int> p = &t->m_i;
printf("%p %d\r\n",p,*p);
DoLotsOfAllocs();
printf("%p %d\r\n",p,*p);
Output on my machine [addresses will be different for you]
******* Output ******
00AC9B3C 99
00AA8D18 99
There you go; the same interior pointer variable p
which was pointing to 0x00AC9B3C
later points to0x00AA8D18
. Had we been using a native pointer, the runtime wouldn't have been able to update its value (the pointed-to address); and just in case you were wondering about trying that out, don't bother, since the compiler won't let you use a native pointer to point to a managed object's member.
Passing by reference using interior pointers
One handy use for interior pointers is when you have a requirement for functions with pass-by-ref arguments. Let's take a simple function that simply squares the passed integer :-
ref class Test
{
public:
int m_i;
};
void Square(interior_ptr<int> pNum)
{
*pNum *= *pNum;
}
Now see this code.
void _tmain()
{
Test^ t = gcnew Test();
t->m_i = 99;
interior_ptr<int> p = &t->m_i;
printf("%d\r\n",*p);
Square(p);
printf("%d\r\n",*p);
int a = 10;
Square(&a);
printf("%d\r\n",a);
Output :-
******* Output ******
99
9801
100
You can see how we can pass both interior pointers as well as native pointers to the same function; this is because native pointers automatically convert to interior pointers. [Note that interior pointers cannot convert to native pointers]
Now that we've seen how interior pointers can be used for passing values by reference, it should be stated here that the same could be just as easily accomplished using tracking references. See below another function that does the same thing using a tracking reference as parameter.
void Square2(int% pNum)
{
pNum *= pNum;
}
And the corresponding caller code.
void _tmain()
{
Test^ t = gcnew Test();
t->m_i = 99;
printf("%d\r\n",t->m_i);
Square2(t->m_i);
printf("%d\r\n",t->m_i);
int a = 10;
Square2(a);
printf("%d\r\n",a);
Tracking references and interior pointers are quite similar in nature, though you can do a lot more with interior pointers like pointer arithmetic and pointer comparison.
Pointer arithmetic with interior pointers
Here's some sample code that iterates through and sums an array of int
s.
void ArrayStuff()
{
array<int>^ arr = gcnew array<int> {2,4,6,8,3,5,7};
interior_ptr<int> p = &arr[0];
int s = 0;
while(p != &arr[0] + arr->Length)
{
s += *p;
p++;
}
printf("Sum = %d\r\n",s);
}
And here's some code that directly manipulates a System::String
String^ str = "hello";
interior_ptr<Char> ptxt = const_cast< interior_ptr<Char> >(
PtrToStringChars(str));
for(int i=0; i<str->Length; i++)
*(ptxt+i) = *(ptxt+i) + 1;
Console::WriteLine(str);
If you are of a masochistic disposition, you could change the for
loop to
for(; (*ptxt++)++; *ptxt);
with the same results. It doesn't produce very legible looking code but it does demonstrate that you can do pointer comparison (implicit check for nullptr
in the above example) with interior pointers.
Points of interest
You cannot have an interior pointer as a member of a class and I guess this is to maintain language interoperability. I mean you can't have VBers using your class if it's full of interior pointer member objects, can you? (If I guessed wrong, please feel free to correct me)
You cannot use an interior pointer to point to a ref
object, though you can point to the handle to a ref
object. Thus interior_pointer<System::String>
is not allowed but interior_ptr<System::String^>
is legal.
All interior pointers are implicitly initialized to nullptr
unless you explicitly give it some other default value.
The compiler will emit a modopt
to distinguish interior pointers from tracking references. Currently this modopt
isMicrosoft::VisualC::IsCXXPointerModifier
(found in Microsoft.VisualC.dll) but in the final release this will be System::Runtime::CompilerServices::IsExplicitlyDereferenced
(found in mscorlib.dllstarting with Whidbey).
For value
classes, the this
pointer is an interior pointer. My guess is that, this is so because value
classes can be members of managed classes, and if so, assuming the value
class uses the this
pointer, it could be fatally dangerous if the pointer was not an interior pointer. (If I guessed wrong, please feel free to correct me)
value class V
{
void A()
{
interior_ptr<V> pV1 = this;
V* pV2 = this; //won't compile
}
};
Conclusion
I hope I've given a pretty decent coverage of interior pointers and their usage in C++/CLI. Kindly submit your feedback so that I get a chance to improve on this article. Thank you.
Copy from:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/8901/An-overview-of-interior-pointers-in-C-CLI