RE: Multi Occurrence Data Structure returned from a procedure

>> However, by the same token, I don't think returning a pointer to a user 
>> space is a good idea, either!!  The calling program shouldn't need to know 
>> that you've stored your data in a user space, or dynamic memory, or a 
>>file, or anything else -- all of that should be transparent to the caller! 

Thanks for the comments. When I say returning a pointer to a user space, I am 
talking about returning from a User Space API. I have one called XVUSPC that is 
in my trigger mediator package. In this case, it is the user of the API that is 
getting a pointer back. All it is doing is encapsulating the API calls.

In my generic string parser, I store my state transition tables in a user space 
so from inside the generic string parser, I make a call to the XVUSPC API to 
get a pointer into the user space. This is done inside the service program. The 
user is just calling the load function, the load string function and the parse. 
How it is implemented, they do not know. Anyway. 

>> I consider this approach to be acceptable.   Now, I know someone is going 
>> to reply to this message and tell me that I should use a numeric handle 
>> instead of a pointer.  And, I don't disagree, but I don't think the 
>> pointer method is bad, either.

I would be one of those people who think that you should return a numeric 
handle. Lately I have taken that one level further in IFS and that is to have 
the user assign a name to the open. Some string constant and then refer to the 
open through that name. I have found that the numeric number getting confusing 
to users of the function but I would definitely feel there is no reason to 
return a pointer in this case. Just to easy for the user to screw it up and all 
that can be hidden. In your example, could you not pass the order identifier to 
the new function and refer to the order from that. In this example, also, it 
would seem that the result would be an order number. Wouldn't that be 
preferable to returning the pointer? Seems like the pointer is not really 
needed. 

Anyway, my thoughts anyway.