Explain the difference between near, far and huge pointers in c? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Near, far, and huge pointers aren't part of standard C; they are/were an extension put in by several vendors to deal with segmented memory architectures. Karthik's answer gives much more detail.

Answer 2

The differences are only relevant on 16 bit intel architectures.

As far as virtual addresses is concerned, It has two components - a selector and an offset.

The selector is an index into a table of base addresses and offset is added onto that base address.

near pointers don't have a selector - they have an implied selector. They can access 64k off the virtual address space.

far pointers have an explicit selector. However when you do pointer arithmetic on them the selector isn't modified.

huge pointers have an explicit selector. When you do pointer arithmetic on them though the selector can change.

Please Refer this link for more info:

http://www.codeproject.com/Answers/103115/near-vs-far-vs-huge-pointers/?cmt=11086#answer1