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Far pointer

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In a segmented architecture computer, a far pointer is a pointer to memory in a specific context,[1] such as a segment selector making it possible to point to addresses outside of the default segment.

Comparison and arithmetic on far pointers is problematic: there can be several different segment-offset address pairs pointing to one physical address.

In 16-bit x86

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For example, in an Intel 8086, as well as in later processors running 16-bit code, a far pointer has two parts: a 16-bit segment value, and a 16-bit offset value. A linear address is obtained by shifting the binary segment value four times to the left, and then adding the offset value. Hence the effective address is 21 bits[Note 1]. There can be up to 4096 different segment-offset address pairs pointing to one physical address. To compare two far pointers, they must first be converted (normalized) to their linear representation.

On C compilers targeting the 8086 processor family, far pointers were declared using a non-standard far qualifier; e.g., char far *p; defined a far pointer to a char. The difficulty of normalizing far pointers could be avoided with the non-standard huge qualifier. On other compilers it was done using an equally non-standard __far qualifier.[2]

Example of far pointer:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   char far *p =(char far *)0x55550005;
   char far *q =(char far *)0x53332225;
   *p = 80;
   (*p)++;
   printf("%d",*q);
   return 0;
}
Output of the following program: 81; Because both addresses point to same location.
Physical Address = (value of segment register) * 0x10 + (value of offset).
Location pointed to by pointer p is : 0x5555 * 0x10 + 0x0005 = 0x55555
Location pointed to by pointer q is : 0x5333 * 0x10 + 0x2225 = 0x55555
So, p and q both point to the same location 0x55555.

Notes

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  1. ^ Early x86 processors only had a 20-bit address bus so results above 1MiB wrapped around to zero, discarding the carry bit. PC's using the 80286 or newer, which had the necessary address lines, implemented the A20 gate to toggle this behavior for backwards compatibility with older software.

References

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  1. ^ Miller, Ethan L.; Neville-Neil, George; Benetopoulos, Achilles; Mehra, Pankaj; Bittman, Daniel (December 2023). "Pointers in Far Memory". Communications of the ACM. 66 (12). New York City: Association for Computing Machinery. ISSN 0001-0782. LCCN 61065941. OCLC 1514517. Wikidata Q1120519. Retrieved February 11, 2024.
  2. ^ "Introduction to Open Watcom C/C++". GitHub. 2024. Retrieved February 11, 2024.