As in C, one should think of Cyclone pointers as just addresses. Operations on pointers, such as *x, x->f, and x[e], behave the same as in C, with the exception that run-time checks sometimes precede memory accesses. (Exactly when and where these checks occur is described below.) However, Cyclone prevents memory errors such as dereferencing dangling pointers or indexing outside an array’s bounds, so it may reject some operations on pointers that C would accept.

In order to enforce memory safety and distinguish between different uses of pointers, Cyclone pointer types include additional qualifiers when compared to their C counterparts. These qualifiers are described briefly below and in more detail throughout this section: