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Re: Naive pointer question ? [message #28943 is a reply to message #28942]

Tue, 22 January 2002 14:14

Paul van Delst
Messages: 364
Registered: March 1997

Senior Member

trouble wrote:
>
> From my understanding, pointers are useful in C where you have the
> option of passing by value or by reference, but in IDL it seems one
> *always* passes by reference (insofar as any variable passed to a
> function and then changed within that function is also changed in the
> calling function).
>
> So I was wondering, what is the benefit of explicitly using pointers
> in IDL ?

Let's you easily create complex data structures at the very least (which may or may not be a
Good Thing). E.g. imagine a data array where each "element" was another array, and each one was
a different size. One probably could gin together a regular ol' structure containing
(non-pointer) arrays I'm sure, but the code would probably look like chook scratchings through
your dog's dinner.

paulv

--
Paul van Delst Religious and cultural
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[Message index]

		Re: Naive pointer question ? By: James Kuyper on Wed, 23 January 2002 08:02
		Re: Naive pointer question ? By: David Fanning on Tue, 22 January 2002 21:03
		Re: Naive pointer question ? By: Bhautik Joshi on Tue, 22 January 2002 20:51
		Re: Naive pointer question ? By: James Kuyper on Tue, 22 January 2002 14:34
		Re: Naive pointer question ? By: Paul van Delst on Tue, 22 January 2002 14:14

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