Pointers to Functions

No discussion of C or C++ functions would be complete without mention of pointers to functions. We'll take a quick look at this topic and leave the full exposition of the possibilities to more advanced texts.

Functions, like data items, have addresses. A function's address is the memory address at which the stored machine language code for the function begins. Normally, it's neither important nor useful for us or the user to know that address, but it can be useful to a program. For example, it's possible to write a function that takes the address of another function as an argument. That enables the first function to find the second function and run it. This approach is more awkward than simply having the first function ...

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