----- Original Message ----- From: "George Greer" <greerga@CIRCLEMUD.ORG> > Who thinks the global buffers (buf, buf1, buf2, arg) need to go? > Who wants to keep them? > I might be going against the general trend here; I'm quite happy with the global buffer system, thank you. > and why? > First off, it makes for better memory efficiency to have those 4 global buffers to write to, instead of allocating stack space for every function. Second, about shadowing: It is ok to declare a local variable named buf. This will shadow the global buffer, and in that particular function you can act as if the (global) buf didn't exist. As long as you know when you're doing it, shadowing isn't necessarily such a bad thing. (I figure some of you don't agree on this, reading your previous posts. I'm afraid it's a question of personal taste, and cannot be discussed.) In short: The global buffers are a help as long as you know what you're doing. Being a newbie coder is something we've all tried. Having to deal with *buf = '\0' is just another thing. Heck, in the beginning I just added that line to all of my new functions. It worked. :P As long as you always assume buf to contain (strange/garbage) data from the beginning, you can make it work just as you want. > I'm curious. Anything to satisfy your curiousity. Welcor -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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