At 19:14 29/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

>"Jean-Hugues ROBERT" <jean_hugues_robert / yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>news:6.0.1.1.0.20040429071924.01cd1ef0 / pop.mail.yahoo.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am coining a Pointer class in Ruby. Kind of a C pointer, more
> > like a C++ smart pointer actually. Should work for any lvalue.
>
>Care to share what usage you envision for this?
>
>Btw: this rather looks like a reference than a pointer.  As far as I
>understand, you create an alias for some variable (possibly a local var)
>as a handle to modify it from outside the original scope.  Is that
>correct?
>
>     robert

Correct. But it should works for any lvalue not just variables.
i.e. ref{"a_hash[3]"} for example.


I initially named it a reference. But, references are usually automatically
dereferenced (they are more transparent than pointers).

I could no find a way to do this in Ruby. That is why I am using the
[]() accessor to get the referenced value. This is very similar to
what you do in C with a pointer using * (content of). So, I eventually
renamed the class Pointer.

Now, I may be wrong about the difference between a pointer and a reference
and I would be happy to change the code to something better.

Yours,

Jean-Hugues


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