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near,far, huge pointers
Jun 22, 2014 at 4:23pm
i've come across many questions concerning size of near,far and huge pointers but we hardly need to use these pointers...wat is their significance?
Jun 22, 2014 at 4:31pm
They are not really used anymore. They were important like 20 years ago... but today... not so much.
Back in the day, a normal "near" pointer might have only been 16-bits wide. This would means that a near pointer could only address data in the current segment.
A "far" pointer would be wider, including not only the address within the segment, but also the segment itself. So a far pointer might have been 32-bits wide. The tradeoff being that it could access a wider range of memory, but would consume more memory and might be slower to dereference because it'd have to switch segments.
Nowadays, all pointers are pretty much going to be 32+ bits wide, so they can access anything regardless. So the idea of making a distinction between near/far pointers has disappeared -- they're all basically far pointers.
Back in the day, a normal "near" pointer might have only been 16-bits wide. This would means that a near pointer could only address data in the current segment.
A "far" pointer would be wider, including not only the address within the segment, but also the segment itself. So a far pointer might have been 32-bits wide. The tradeoff being that it could access a wider range of memory, but would consume more memory and might be slower to dereference because it'd have to switch segments.
Nowadays, all pointers are pretty much going to be 32+ bits wide, so they can access anything regardless. So the idea of making a distinction between near/far pointers has disappeared -- they're all basically far pointers.
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