RE: ARGH!!! Pointers

["David Morris" <David.Morris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

Bob is right about the storage going away. You would also want to
set your occurrence to 1 when you pass or return the pointer or you
will be returning a pointer to the last element used. In this case,
the storage going away points out a design problem. I wouldn't just
specify STATIC and call it good. For what you are doing I would
generally allocate storage on the heap using ALLOC and DEALLOC.
That way your MODS can vary in size so that you don't allocate
more storage than you need.

A second alternative would be to allocate the storage in the caller
(then it could be local) and pass your pointer to the subprogram. That

works when you don't want to deal with allocate/deallocating but locks

you into a size that fits your greatest need.

David Morris

>>> cozzi@rpgiv.com 05/30/02 03:14PM >>>
Yep, you're returning a pointer to a local variable (your MODS) and
while the pointer is "valid" the storage it's point at is no longer
valid after the return to the caller--it goes away.
You should move it to global variable (outside of a procedure, but
still
in the same module).
Another option would be to add the STATIC keyword to the MODS. That
way
the storage doesn't get thrown out until the program/service program
is
closed down.