The Base Services of Core Foundation define
base types
and
polymorphic functions
. Base types are data types that are commonly used in Core Foundation functions. Most importantly, they include a generic reference type,
CFTypeRef
, that can refer to any Core Foundation object. Polymorphic functions, which have parameters typed as
CFTypeRef
, can operate on any Core Foundation object. Base Services also include the CFAllocator opaque type and programming interfaces for creating your own custom allocators.