[openbeos] Re: Pointer or reference?
- From: Ingo Weinhold <bonefish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 20:06:07 +0100
On 2004-03-27 at 19:32:32 [+0100], Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
> > > So, I would say, for public APIs (or those that may become public in the
> > > future), references should be avoided.
> >
> > Sadly, I have to agree.
>
> References have the advantage that the function/method already says it does
> not accept NULL pointers. The data must always be defined.
True enough. Nevertheless they are sometimes not handy. E.g. references are
what in Java would correspond to `final', i.e. they can't be changed after
initialization.
> Additionally, when passing a BString object it is much better to pass the
> reference because you cannot forget the &-sign and the code looks nicer:
>
> BString string;
> ...
> control->SetLabel(string);
> versus
> control->SetLabel(&string);
By convention the Be API never expects strings to be passed in cases where
the string is not changed by the callee (at least that is stated somewhere).
Instead const char* is used. For functions that return a string via reference
parameter, if there is a BString* version, then there's virtually always also
a (char*, size_t) version.
> I really prefer the reference version. It could also state that the
> SetLabel() method does not have side-effect (i.e.: it does not modify
> string) which could be useful sometimes.
Huh? To ensure that something isn't changed, `const' is used. And it works
for both, pointers and references.
CU, Ingo
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