C Pocket Reference

Name

restrict

Synopsis

ANSI C99 introduces the type qualifier restrict , which is only applicable to pointers. If a pointer declared with the restrict qualifier points to an object that is to be modified, then the object can only be accessed using that pointer. This information allows the compiler to generate optimized machine code. It is up to the programmer to ensure that the restriction is respected!

Example:

void *memcpy( void * restrict dest,     // destination
              const void* restrict src, // source
              size_t n );

In using the standard function memcpy() to copy a memory block of n bytes, the programmer must ensure that the source and destination blocks do not overlap.