From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-10-22T23:01:17+09:00
Subject: Re: rb_gc_register_address problem

On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 07:15:13AM +0900, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> I was puzzled by the example itself; hopefully it is really just an
> example:
> 
> 1) Why do you have a vector of char* instead of std::vector<string> in
> C++?  In this case you don't get the advantage of the string copy
> constructor when you call the push_back() on the vector, which then
> requires you to store the corresponding VALUE.

I'm storing command-line arguments for later use, to pass to a function
that expects an array of char*.

> 2) Why do you want store the char* of the VALUE instead of the VALUE
> itself?  You can then store the VALUE in a global ruby array instead of a
> global vector so that you don't need rb_global_variable(&argv[0]).

See above.

> 3) By its name, rb_global_variable() is supposed to store a C global
> variable (of type VALUE); so when we call rb_global_variable() for a
> temporary C variable, at that point the C code design is questionable.

Agreed.

But if the GC stores a VALUE* instead of a VALUE, this is an extra (and
seemingly unnecessary) indirection.  I was curious if there was a reason
for it, other than to prevent me from doing what I did.

Paul