Re: C++ and Java CNI: Check Java references

[Mike Harrold <mharrold at cas dot org>]

> 
> >>>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > Last night I was thinking that maybe if we turned every pointer in CNI
> > into a reference then we could have gcjh add `operator *' to every
> > class automatically.  But of course this doesn't work because we would
> > actually need `operator .', which C++ doesn't provide :-(.
> 
> > What if we opted to use references everywhere but kept the source
> > using `->' to reference fields and such?
> 
> How would you do that?  -> only works with pointers.

Can you not define operator->() ?

/Mike

> 
> > Two things with this approach that I don't yet understand:
> 
> > * Is there a performance impact for using references instead of
> >   pointers as arguments to methods?  It's hard to believe there would
> >   be one, but I don't know for certain.
> 
> There certainly shouldn't be.  There should be a slight performance gain
> because we can assume that references are non-NULL.
> 
> I would be strongly in favor of such a change; it would make CNI code more
> Java-like.  It's harder to do dangerous things with pointers if you're only
> dealing with references.
> 
> > * How are objects returned from methods handled?
> 
> They can be returned by value or by reference.  Which do you mean?
> 
> Jason
>