Re: usage help for _com_ptr_t smart pointers created with #import

From:
"Heinz Ozwirk" <hozwirk.SPAM@arcor.de>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.atl
Date:
Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:44:14 +0200
Message-ID:
<44ecb00e$0$10142$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net>
"Jason S" <jmsachs@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1156353530.922898.187540@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

But I'm having trouble thinking what I need to do for set_Bar. I want
to make sure the following:

1) if the Variant contains VT_EMPTY, I want to release pBar and set it
to NULL, and return S_OK.
2) if the Variant contains something besides VT_EMPTY or VT_UNKNOWN or
VT_DISPATCH, I return an error and pBar is left alone. This is easy.
3) if the Variant does contain a VT_UNKNOWN or VT_DISPATCH, I want to
make sure it supports the IBar interface.
3a) if the Variant does support IBar, then pBar gets assigned a new
value from the variant, and the old value of pBar should be released
properly, and I return S_OK.
3b) if the Variant does not support IBar, then I want to return an
error and leave pBar alone.

Here's my attempt but I'm not sure it does the right thing. See my
questions marked with "???"

STDMETHODIMP CFoo::set_Bar(VARIANT v)
{
switch(V_VT(&v))
{
case VT_EMPTY:
// ??? is this the right way to free pBar?
pBar = NULL;
return S_OK;
case VT_UNKNOWN:
case VT_DISPATCH:
try {
pBar = V_UNKNOWN(&v);
// ??? will this release the old value of pBar?
}
catch (_com_error& e)
{
// ??? if I get here, is pBar left alone or is it corrupted?
// if it's corrupted, how do I test the incoming variant
// before I assign it to pBar?
return E_INVALIDARG;
}
return S_OK;
 default:
return E_INVALIDARG;
}
}


You could simplyfy that to

STDMETHODIMP CFoo::set_Bar(VARIANT v)
{
    try
    {
        pBar = v;
    }
    catch (_com_error const& e)
    {
        return e.Error();
    }
    return S_OK;
}

This code does not meet your condition 3b, it does not leave alone pBar but
reset it to null. But that's a problem your own code also has. _com_ptr_t
does not throw if the new object does not support the required interface. It
just resets its old pointer to null (releasing its previous object) and
continues. But'll get some _com_error the next time you try to call a method
through such a pointer.

HTH
    Heinz

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