Re: STL Vector - pass by reference?

From:
"Doug Harrison [MVP]" <dsh@mvps.org>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.language
Date:
Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:39:55 -0500
Message-ID:
<d4u0c31dijh6tunr9j71vl4mjsb95i23g7@4ax.com>
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:13:18 +0100, Gerry Hickman
<gerry666uk@newsgroup.nospam> wrote:

I was confused by Doug's example, I'd copied it literally

vector<string>::size_type
void GetDeviceClasses(vector<string>& guids)
{
   guids.clear();
   // If you can estimate n, reserve can eliminate reallocations.
   // guids.reserve(n);
   ...
   returns guids.size();
}

I guessed 'returns' should be a comment, but the first two lines didn't
make sense with void following vector<string>::size_type, I guess I was
supposed to _replace_ void with vector<string>::size_type, seems obvious
now.


Of course, I meant to write:

vector<string>::size_type
GetDeviceClasses(vector<string>& guids)
{
    guids.clear();
    // If you can estimate n, reserve can eliminate reallocations.
    // guids.reserve(n);
    ...
    return guids.size();
}

I'm amazed that no one, including myself, has commented on this before now.
:) I think what happened back in July, when I was replying to your original
thread, is that, I initially had the function returning void, but then I
reviewed your example and saw it would be useful to return the number of
GUIDs that were found. Or maybe I thought, "Hmmm, this function is
essentially an unbounded 'read' function for GUIDs, so why not return the
number read?" Whatever I thought, I followed it up by performing an
unusually sloppy edit. Sorry about that.

--
Doug Harrison
Visual C++ MVP

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