restrict

In the C programming language, as of the C99 standard, restrict is a keyword that can be used in pointer declarations. The restrict keyword is a declaration of intent given by the programmer to the compiler. It says that for the lifetime of the pointer, only the pointer itself or a value directly derived from it (such as pointer + 1) will be used to access the object to which it points. This limits the effects of pointer aliasing, aiding optimizations. If the declaration of intent is not followed and the object is accessed by an independent pointer, this will result in undefined behavior. The use of the restrict keyword in C, in principle, allows non-obtuse C to achieve the same performance as the same program written in Fortran. C++ does not have standard support for restrict, but many compilers have equivalents that usually work in both C++ and C, such as the GCC's and Clang's __restrict__, and Visual C++'s __declspec(restrict). In addition, __restrict is supported by those three compilers.