The one thing worse for beginners than pointers is … function pointers. A normal pointer holds the address of another variable whereas a function pointer holds the address of some code.

But before I delve into the complexities of function pointers, you have to understand a little bit about functions. A function is defined, not just by what it does but the values you pass in and get back from it. Here are a couple of examples.

int add(int b,int c) {
  return a + b;
}

void DoSomething(int value) {
  //
}

The code generated by the compiler has to pass in the parameters and usually does it by pushing values on the stack or in registers. In the code for the function, the first thing it does it fetch the parameters. So when you use a function pointer, according to the definition of that function pointer, the compiler will generate code in the function to extract parameters.

I’ll look at the syntax of function pointers tomorrow; it’s always the complicated bit, probably the most complicated bit but it dos give your program a bit more flexibility.

I’m now using the Prismatic plugin. Much nicer listing with indentations!