Pointer types

In an unsafe context, a type (§4) may be a pointer-type as well as a value-type or a reference-type. However, a pointer-type may also be used in a typeof expression (§7.6.10.6) outside of an unsafe context as such usage is not unsafe.

type:
...
pointer-type

A pointer-type is written as an unmanaged-type or the keyword void, followed by a * token:

pointer-type:
unmanaged-type *
void *

unmanaged-type:
type

The type specified before the * in a pointer type is called the referent type of the pointer type. It represents the type of the variable to which a value of the pointer type points.

Unlike references (values of reference types), pointers are not tracked by the garbage collector—the garbage collector has no knowledge of pointers and the data to which they point. For this reason a pointer is not permitted to point to a reference or to a struct that contains references, and the referent type of a pointer must be an unmanaged-type.

An unmanaged-type is any type that isn’t a reference-type or constructed type, and doesn’t contain reference-type or constructed type fields at any level of nesting. In other words, an unmanaged-type is one of the following:

· sbyte, byte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong, char, float, double, decimal, or bool.

· Any enum-type.

· Any pointer-type.

· Any user-defined struct-type that is not a constructed type and contains fields of unmanaged-types only.

The intuitive rule for mixing of pointers and references is that referents of references (objects) are permitted to contain pointers, but referents of pointers are not permitted to contain references.

Some examples of pointer types are given in the table below:

 

Example	Description
byte*	Pointer to byte
char*	Pointer to char
int**	Pointer to pointer to int
int*[]	Single-dimensional array of pointers to int
void*	Pointer to unknown type

 

For a given implementation, all pointer types must have the same size and representation.

Unlike C and C++, when multiple pointers are declared in the same declaration, in C# the * is written along with the underlying type only, not as a prefix punctuator on each pointer name. For example

int* pi, pj; // NOT as int *pi, *pj;

The value of a pointer having type T* represents the address of a variable of type T. The pointer indirection operator * (§18.5.1) may be used to access this variable. For example, given

a variable P of type int*, the expression *P denotes the int variable found at the address contained in P.

Like an object reference, a pointer may be null. Applying the indirection operator to a null pointer results in implementation-defined behavior. A pointer with value null is represented by all-bits-zero.

The void* type represents a pointer to an unknown type. Because the referent type is unknown, the indirection operator cannot be applied to a pointer of type void*, nor can any arithmetic be performed on such a pointer. However, a pointer of type void* can be cast to any other pointer type (and vice versa).

Pointer types are a separate category of types. Unlike reference types and value types, pointer types do not inherit from object and no conversions exist between pointer types and object. In particular, boxing and unboxing (§4.3) are not supported for pointers. However, conversions are permitted between different pointer types and between pointer types and the integral types. This is described in §18.4.

A pointer-type cannot be used as a type argument (§4.4), and type inference (§7.5.2) fails on generic method calls that would have inferred a type argument to be a pointer type.

A pointer-type may be used as the type of a volatile field (§10.5.3).

Although pointers can be passed as ref or out parameters, doing so can cause undefined behavior, since the pointer may well be set to point to a local variable which no longer exists when the called method returns, or the fixed object to which it used to point, is no longer fixed. For example:

using System;

class Test
{
static int value = 20;

unsafe static void F(out int* pi1, ref int* pi2) {
int i = 10;
pi1 = &i;

fixed (int* pj = &value) {
//...
pi2 = pj;
}
}

static void Main() {
int i = 10;
unsafe {
int* px1;
int* px2 = &i;

F(out px1, ref px2);

Console.WriteLine("*px1 = {0}, *px2 = {1}",
*px1, *px2); // undefined behavior
}
}
}

A method can return a value of some type, and that type can be a pointer. For example, when given a pointer to a contiguous sequence of ints, that sequence’s element count, and some other int value, the following method returns the address of that value in that sequence, if a match occurs; otherwise it returns null:

unsafe static int* Find(int* pi, int size, int value) {
for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i) {
if (*pi == value)
return pi;
++pi;
}
return null;
}

In an unsafe context, several constructs are available for operating on pointers:

· The * operator may be used to perform pointer indirection (§18.5.1).

· The -> operator may be used to access a member of a struct through a pointer (§18.5.2).

· The [] operator may be used to index a pointer (§18.5.3).

· The & operator may be used to obtain the address of a variable (§18.5.4).

· The ++ and -- operators may be used to increment and decrement pointers (§18.5.5).

· The + and - operators may be used to perform pointer arithmetic (§18.5.6).

· The ==,!=, <, >, <=, and => operators may be used to compare pointers (§18.5.7).

· The stackalloc operator may be used to allocate memory from the call stack (§18.7).

· The fixed statement may be used to temporarily fix a variable so its address can be obtained (§18.6).