Correctness of data representations (Extended Abstract): Pointers in high level languages

Authors:
D. M. Berry;Z. Erlich;C. J. Lucena
Affiliations:
Computer Science Dept., UCLA, Los Angeles, California;Computer Science Dept., UCLA, Los Angeles, California;Depto. de Informática, Pontlfícia Universidade, Catollca, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, BRASIL
Venue:
Proceedings of the 1976 conference on Data : Abstraction, definition and structure
Year:
1976

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Abstract

At present, there is considerable debate whether, in light of what is being learned about construction of reliable software, pointers are desirable in high level programming languages. One side [Hoa73, Hoa75] maintains that 1) Pointers are like the goto in that they are an invitation to create spaghetti in one's program [Hoa75]. 2) In some languages, e.g., PL/1 [Wlk71], the use of pointers can lead to serious type violations, for example, the compiler believes that a given pointer will be pointing to an integer when in fact, it will be pointing to a real. 3) The indiscriminate use of pointers may confound the attempts of hardware pipelining and use of cache memory to speed up computations [Hoa73, Hoa75]. 4) A pointer may be left dangling, that is, a pointer may point to a variable or other datum which has been deallocated [Bry71, CDMPS73, Bry74].