Pointer in Basic

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As bplus already elucidated, what I call the _MEM gang. But it's somewhat clunky to some people used to how code looks in C. They prefer Freebasic because those developers desired as close association to C/C++ as possible. It explains the "ZString" type and the folly with using fixed-length strings in UDT's and working with files.

QB64 allows the programmer to do pointer-heavy stuff in C if he/she wanted to. Just include stuff in "dot-H" files and have a matching "DECLARE LIBRARY... END DECLARE" to have subprogram and function prototypes. This is actually done extensively in QB64 itself to expand the language.

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SpoilerDo not look at a lot of Purebasic code, especially that targeted for Win32 API because it's confusing. They talk sometimes about using an integer type (declared as "something.i") to sometimes substitute for pointer. This was because the language used to be not sophisticated enough to handle pointer variables per se and there needed to be a way to give an address to point to a variable or function or something. The thing wrong with that is that most "pointers" in Win32 API were 32-bit for a 32-bit operating system, and therefore it was easy to assume the "dot-i" which is for 32-bit integer. Pointers should never have types in any language, it depends always on the CPU architecture.

Another thing to get confused about is the _OFFSET type in QB64. But that is actually a go-between so the programmer could call stuff from Win API and other places. _OFFSET is actually the "void" pointer type in C.

https://qb64phoenix.com/qb64wiki/index.p...KE_Library

Here is very close to what is called "PEEK" and "POKE" in Purebasic: just simple memory buffers to store stuff into. But this could be done about as easily with the _MEM statements.