In computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 a bounded pointer is a pointer that is augmented with additional information that enable the storage bounds within which it may point to be deduced. This additional information sometimes takes the form of two pointers holding the upper and lower addresses of the storage occupied by the object to which the bounded pointer points.

Use of bound information makes it possible for a compiler

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

 to generate code that test if the pointer's value lies within the bounds prior to dereferencing the pointer or modifying the value of the pointer. If the bounds are violated some kind of exception

Exception

Exception may refer to:* An action that is not part of ordinary operations or standards* Exception handling, in programming languages** or a programming interrupt itself of which exception handling is meant to deal with....

 may be raised. This is especially useful for data constructs such as arrays in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

.