Why this program with near pointer doesn't work?

Question

Why this program with near pointer doesn't work?

Debojit Acharjee 455

Why this program with near pointer doesn't work on VS Code?

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main()
{
    // declaring a near pointer
    int near* ptr;
 
    // size of the near pointer
    printf("Size of Near Pointer: %d bytes", sizeof(ptr));
    return 0;
}

Output:

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Minxin Yu 13,506 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-07-31T06:07:11.9433333+00:00
From past comments, you're using GCC instead of MSVC, which could be the cause of the error.
And near has no meaning.
minwindef.h definition

#define near

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Minxin Yu 13,506 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-07-31T06:07:11.9433333+00:00

From past comments, you're using GCC instead of MSVC, which could be the cause of the error.
And near has no meaning.
minwindef.h definition

#define near

Answer 1

RLWA32 49,636

NEAR and FAR pointers are from the dim past before the advent of the flat address space that is used in modern systems. They remain in the headers for compatibility purposes so that old code isn't broken but they have no meaning today.

Answer 2

Castorix31 90,686

In VS 2022, for "near" :

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>

Answer 3

Bruce (SqlWork.com) 78,086 Volunteer Moderator

Because you are using a compiler (like most) that does not support these keywords.

near and far are custom keywords for an old windows intel c compiler and are used for accessing segmented memory. Few C/C++ compilers support these keywords any more as this hardware is fairly obsolete.

you really should not use these unsupported keywords. The windows.h include define them as blank (so they basically are removed), so if you add windows.h your code will compile, but really you should not use them.

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Why this program with near pointer doesn't work?

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