Re: [boost] [Review] Shmem Library

From: me22 (me22.ca_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-09 15:36:50

On 2/9/06, Pavel Antokolsky aka Zigmar <zigmar_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> One minor thing, I didn't particularly liked about design is that
> several method (for example shared_message_queue::receive) return
> values into variables passed by non-const reference. I don't like this
> approach - the resulting code is obscure because you can't see from
> that code, that variable is modified. I think of the the following
> approaches might result a better client code:
> 1) Return multiple values (i.e. by using std::pair, boost::tuple)
> 2) Modify parameters, but instead of passing by non-const reference -
> pass them by pointer. When pointer passed it immediately indicates
> that variable might be modified as opposite to non-const reference,
> which is a rare beast nowadays. If you think of  foo(someVar) via
> foo(&someVar), the second hints about possibility of modifying
> someVar, while first one doesn't.
>

I'd like to second KevinH on this one; I think that a non-const
reference is a much better choice than a pointer.  To me, non-const
reference means output while a pointer means that the method will be
taking ownership of that pointer.

~ Scott