On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 7:01 PM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> You can't do this with Python, since pointer arithmetic fundamentally >> doesn't exist. > > > Pointer arithmetic doesn't exist in Pascal either, yet > Pascal most definitely has pointers as a distinct data > type. > > Insisting that only pointer arithmetic counts as > "manipulating" pointers seems a strange way of defining > the word.
Understood. I'm withdrawing the assertion that pointer arithmetic is essential, weakening the demand to the ability to: 1) Take the address of an object (yielding a pointer) 2) Move the pointer around as its own thing, eg pass it as a function parameter 3) Dereference the pointer, to read or write the original object But you have to be able to prove that #2 is actually looking at the pointer as its own entity. This has to be distinct from passing around the object itself in some way. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
