volatile type qualifier

volatile type qualifier

Each individual type in the C type system has several qualified versions of that type, corresponding to one, two, or all three of the const, volatile, and, for pointers to object types, restrict qualifiers. This page describes the effects of the volatile qualifier.

Every access (both read and write) made through an lvalue expression of volatile-qualified type is considered an observable side effect for the purpose of optimization and is evaluated strictly according to the rules of the abstract machine (that is, all writes are completed at some time before the next sequence point). This means that within a single thread of execution, a volatile access ca