Pointers

Boa supports pointers, with some niceties (and some limitations as well) that languages such as C don't have. In fact, they are semantically similar to C++'s references. The pointer type in Boa is noted *T, where T is the pointed type.

Simple example

let i = 12
let pi = &i
pi = 15 // automatic dereferencement! 'i' has been updated

Automatic derefencement

Limitations

No null pointers

In Boa, pointers must point to a valid address, so a *T cannot be null (note that null is not a Boa keyword). Use an optional pointer ?*T (see the section about optionals for more information) to simulate a null pointer.

No built-in pointer arithmetic

There is no pointer arithmetic built-in in the language, but the standard library has functions to do so.