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From: John Love-Jensen <eljay@adobe.com>
To: Glover George <dime@gulfsales.com>
Cc: gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Classic C problems, need help!
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 10:50:00 -0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3CD2CDC5.7DC1C137@adobe.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <000001c1f2c9$ee002620$0300a8c0@yellow>

Hi Dime,

What you are running into is the concept known as OWNERSHIP.  I put
OWNERSHIP in capitals because it is a very important C/C++ detail to get
right -- otherwise memory leaks or dangling pointers, then Bad Things Happen
shortly thereafter.  Aside: Java gets around the OWNERSHIP problem by having
garbage collection, pass-by-value for POD and pass-by-reference for UDT.

When you pass the char* to the other routine, does it's contract say that it
is taking OWNERSHIP of that string?  And thus, is responsible to destruct
it, when appropriate.

Or does that other routine merely borrow that string for whatever
purposes... input only?  output only?  input/output (aka update)?  utility
or functor (more so for C++ than C)?

Without known the contract that the routine is operating under, I cannot
tell you your proper course of action.

--Eljay


  reply	other threads:[~2002-05-03 17:50 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2002-05-03 10:38 Glover George
2002-05-03 10:50 ` John Love-Jensen [this message]
2002-05-03 11:35   ` Glover George
2002-05-05  5:34 ` Sebastian Huber
2002-05-03 11:44 Kári Davíðsson

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