Abstract: A magnetic-field-detecting and/or generating apparatus comprises a non-ferromagnetic tip with a longitudinal member of ferromagnetic material embedded in the tip. Further, magnetic-shield means is arranged around the tip. At the end of the longitudinal member a magnetic-field device is arranged. The same principle can be applied to read/write heads for use in magnetic-storage devices.

Abstract: Effective use of optimizing techniques during compilation is difficult in programs that make liberal use of pointers or indirect function calls. The indirection often means that the compiler cannot precisely determine the set of objects pointed to by a pointer at a specific location in the program, and therefore cannot efficiently eliminate pointer redundancies in the code. The present invention provides an optimising method that reduces the size of alias sets associated with program pointers. During an initial compilation phase, intraprocedural information about pointer variables referenced in each function of the program is gathered and saved in a data structure called the pointer alias graph.