There are times when it may be desirable to obtain information about a particular heap buffer or print a diagnostic or warning message related to that heap buffer.
This is particularly true when the program has its own routines providing memory manipulation and you wish to provide bounds checking. This can also be useful for adding additional bounds checking to a program to isolate a problem such as a buffer overrun or underrun that isn't associated with a call to a memory or string function.
In the latter case, rather than keeping a pointer and performing direct manipulations on the pointer, you can define a pointer type that contains all relevant information about the pointer, including the current value, the base pointer, and the extent of the buffer. You could then control access to the pointer through macros or access functions. The access functions can perform the necessary bounds checks and print a warning message in response to attempts to exceed the bounds.