Re: Question about this piece of code.

[Jianwei Sun]

Hello Alf,

* Jianwei Sun:
>

>Hello AnonMail2005@gm ail.com,
>>

>>On Aug 10, 11:18 am, Jianwei Sun <jsunnewsgr...@ gmail.comwrote:
>>>
>>>>I am reading a peice of code which is at the following link:
>>>>http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus4/...l#SECTION00712
>>>>30 00 000000000000
>>>>>
>>>>The code is like this:
>>>>>
>>>>Object& StackAsLinkedLi st::Pop()
>>>>{
>>>>if(count==0 )
>>>>throw domain_error("s tack is empty");
>>>>Object& const result=*list.Fi rst();
>>>>list.Extrac t(&result);
>>>>--count;
>>>>return result;
>>>>}
>>>>Does this code return a reference to local variable result? If
>>>>this
>>>>is
>>>>the case, then this code has problem?
>>>>Thanks,
>>>>J.W.
>>>The list extract function is here:
>>>>
>>>http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus4/...SECTION0052100
>>>00 ...- Hide quoted text -
>>>>
>>>- Show quoted text -
>>>>
>>If we ignore that result is a const and the return type is
>>non-const, it would seem that the returned value (a reference)
>>refers to an object that has been deleted inside the Extract
>>function. This, of course, is wrong.
>>>

>Thank you for verify, I just want to make sure I didn't miss
>something
>obvious since the author who maintains
>this tutorial is a very knowledgeable person and this book is a
>5-star
>book on amazon.com

Perhaps the author is very knowledgable about data structures and
algorithms, but just doesn't know even the basics about C++ and
programming in general?
>
For the code isn't even syntactically correct and should not compile,
and the use of a reference here is extremely non-idiomatic and
misleading, but the basic algorith and data structure logic could be
sound: it seems that it could work, if expressed correctly, but that
could be like interpreting as favorably as possible the writings of a
chimpanzee posing as a college professor.
>
So, I'm pretty sure that if you look up the ACCU C++-oriented review
of that book it will be very far from 5 stars: on the other end of the
scale. ;-)
>
Cheers, & hth.,
>
- Alf
>

Thank you, and I like "that could be like interpreting as favorably as possible
the writings of a
chimpanzee posing as a college professor.".

However, I will still read this book, with more attention to the c++ code.

J.W.