Autorelative Pointer
The term autorelative pointer may refer to a pointer whose value is interpreted as an offset from the address of the pointer itself; thus, if a data structure, has an autorelative pointer member, that points to some portion of itself, then may be relocated in memory without having to update the value of .
The cited patent also uses the term self-relative pointer to mean the same thing. However, the meaning of that term has been used in other ways:
- It is often used to mean an offset from the address of a structure rather than from the address of the pointer itself.
- It has been used to mean a pointer containing its own address, which can be useful for reconstructing in any arbitrary region of memory a collection of data structures that point to each other.
Read more about this topic: Pointer (computer Programming)
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