billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (09/19/89)
>The classic approach would be to copy-in and copy-out the contents >of such containers, but simply passing pointers to contents is >often much faster. There are two approaches: 1) Call it a container of objects. In this case, the semantics are to store a copy, and the programmer may well rely on this, perhaps destroying or modifying the original while relying on the container to keep the earlier version handy. 2) Call it a container of pointers. In this case, the semantics are to store a pointer, and the programmer must refrain from destroying the original. What we should NOT do is allege that we have a container of objects when in reality we have a container of pointers; the two are very different concepts with respect to the effects of object modification. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu