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Reply to @aetios@sns.minovsky.space
chilled bañañas@bananas@catcatnya.com (2026-07-25 01:29:14)
@aetios i wouldn't think of pointers as being integers in the general case tbh. they certainly can be if you need them to be, but it's probably an unhelpful way to think
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Sun Microdevil Pte Ltd@koakuma@uwu.social (2026-07-25 01:40:26)
@bananas @aetios I generally view pointers as a handle to an in-memory thingy the same way I treat a DB connection object as a handle to an in-database thingy; the implementation details matters less than what you can do with it

Yes in most¹ architectures that handle happens to be implemented as a plain integer (of the address) but making that distinction helps a lot with thinking about it, still

¹The real fun part happens when you start to consider execution models like ADI/MTE or CHERI where a pointer is implemented as a rich object, even at machine level