Effective type
suggest changeThe effective type of a data object is the last type information that was associated with it, if any.
// a normal variable, effective type uint32_t, and this type never changes uint32_t a = 0.0; // effective type of *pa is uint32_t, too, simply // because *pa is the object a uint32_t* pa = &a; // the object pointed to by q has no effective type, yet void* q = malloc(sizeof uint32_t); // the object pointed to by q still has no effective type, // because nobody has written to it uint32_t* qb = q; // *qb now has effective type uint32_t because a uint32_t value was written *qb = 37; // the object pointed to by r has no effective type, yet, although // it is initialized void* r = calloc(1, sizeof uint32_t); // the object pointed to by r still has no effective type, // because nobody has written to or read from it uint32_t* rc = r; // *rc now has effective type uint32_t because a value is read // from it with that type. The read operation is valid because we used calloc. // Now the object pointed to by r (which is the same as *rc) has // gained an effective type, although we didn't change its value. uint32_t c = *rc; // the object pointed to by s has no effective type, yet. void* s = malloc(sizeof uint32_t); // the object pointed to by s now has effective type uint32_t // because an uint32_t value is copied into it. memcpy(s, r, sizeof uint32_t);
Observe that for the latter, it was not necessary that we even have an uint32_t*
pointer to that object. The fact that we have copied another uint32_t
object is sufficient.
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