Re: [boost] Re: class proposal

From: William E. Kempf (wekempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-04-24 13:09:36

Noel Yap said:
> "Justin M. Lewis" wrote:
>>
>> in/out seems to be used fairly commonly in COM.  I'm not sure I have
>> any great examples off the top of my head, but I know they're commonly
>> used.
>
> I'm not a COM person, but I believe it's written in C.  If so, then you
> are correct that in/out parameters are more needed since noone would
> want to create a struct for each multiple return type.

COM can be coded in any language.  In COM, as in every RPC mechanism I
have experience with, in/out attributes are used to optimize how things
are wired (or not).  That they might also be meaningful to someone
reading/maintaining the code is just a side effect.

> OTOH, C++ has templates to deal with this situation (ie boost::tuple<>)
> so, qualifying my previous statement, in C++ I still see no need for
> in/out parameters.

Same reason as with RPC... though all it really would do is make the
compilers job easier in optimizing code.  (Note that I'm not advocating
the usage.)

-- 
William E. Kempf