299615 - bad use of pointer operators in nsBaseWidget.h

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Widget, defect)

Description

[Josh Aas]

In nsBaseWidget.h:

NS_IMETHOD GetClientData(void*& aClientData);

I'm not exactly sure what the point of "*&" is, but it looks wrong to me. I
think it needs to be fixed, but if not, please fill me in on why.

Comment 1

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

There's a bunch of these in widget and gfx; they should probably become "void
**"'s and implementations and callees fixed accordingly.  The gfx stuff will
disappear in a few months time, so maybe not worth doing the change for that,
but worth it for widget.

Comment 2

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

void*& is a reference to a pointer. It means that the method can return a
pointer as an 'out' param. The advantage of using a reference as an out param is
that it's impossible (or at least hard) for the caller to pass NULL.

This is in nsIWidget, that isn't going to change any time soon.

Comment 3

[Josh Aas]

Thanks for the explanation.

Comment 4

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> This is in nsIWidget, that isn't going to change any time soon.

Why's that?

Comment 5

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > This is in nsIWidget, that isn't going to change any time soon.
> 
> Why's that?

If you want to take on the task of fixing up the widget imlementations and call
callers of GetNativeData(), then feel free  :)  It's just quite a bit of work.

Comment 6

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> If you want to take on the task of fixing up the widget imlementations and call
> callers of GetNativeData(), then feel free  :)  It's just quite a bit of work.

Ah, yeah, I wasn't sure if there was some ABI reason why we couldn't change it.
 Certainly not worth doing for 1.8, but probably worth it as part of 1.9 --
there will probably need to be some widget changes anyway, so may as well do
some cleanup as well.