In this chapter the use of FLI pointers was examined. A number of FLI functions useful for copying, creating and testing the properties of a pointer were presented. The use of the dereference function for obtaining the value pointed to by a pointer was examined, as was the coercing of a pointer--namely dereferencing a pointer to an object in a manner which returns the value found there as a different type. Finally, an example of the use of the with-coerced-pointer macro was given to illustrate the use of temporary pointers for efficient memory management.
In the next chapter some advanced topics of the FLI are examined in greater detail.
LispWorks Foreign Language Interface User Guide and Reference Manual - 16 Feb 2015