That's another good point!
It's pretty degrading when people's gut reaction is to assume the person's problem is
trivial and basic. I've seen this happen MANY
times on this group. It's a lot less insulting to just add a tag line to your answer
in which you assume it is a worthy question,
e,.g.,
"Assuming these pointers weren't created by your code, in which case you should check
their validity, you might try ..."
For reference, I thought the way people responded to the person who didn't know the C
'\' Macro symbol was perfect.
Again, if you see someone repeatedly using the list for basic questions, then fine,
slam him. But otherwise, give them benefit of
the doubt. These people are good contributers to the list, and everyone's here
because they want to develop for the Palm.
Bobby Williams wrote:
> Thanks for you reply. Not to start a flame war or anything, but I'll state
> this again, my question was not an issue of if I had a now defunct pointer
> or not. As an exercise, I was examining system Features and I was trying to
> discover if there was a known mechanism for determining what is a valid
> pointer and what is not. Not pointers I've generated, but ANY pointer,
> specifically pointers stored as Feature values. I DID look into this
> problem before posting. There is no documentation or knowledge base
> articles covering this domain. In fact, I spent the better part of two days
> trying to work out a solution on my own. And yes, I have over 2 years of
> Palm OS development and I do know the basics of good coding practices. I
> even know how to manage my own pointers. :) But by your own words, this
> falls into the category of "issues that are not documented". When I had a
> road block, I thought to myself: "This would be a good question for
> palm-dev-forum..." Like I said, tough crowd. :)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aaron
> Ardiri
> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 4:10 AM
> To: Palm Developer Forum
> Subject: RE: How to test for valid pointers?
>
> > Wow, tough crowd! Not to be defensive, but I don't think my question was
> > silly at all. Perhaps the wording could of been improved, but it's a
> valid,
> > non-trivial request for information.
>
> dont worry.. some of us actually hold back from hitting the send
> button after writing comments like that :P it gets to you when
> you start to realize that people dont RTFM or even *try* looking
> for a solution to the problems they have before they post here.
>
> > Isn't this one of the purposes of this list?
>
> not to ask questions that are readily available in the knowledge
> base, documentation etc.. you use the dev list to bring up issues
> that are not documented (in my opinion).. mostly, topics discussed
> here end up translated to the knowledge base eventually.
>
> i think its just a purpose of "hey, i cannot be bothered checking"
> and wola.. people post anyhow..
>
> > There is no MemIsValidPtr()-type of function, and would rather not
> > make assumptions based upon a given value.
>
> you know, *you* manage your pointers.. if you free a pointer,
> then set the pointer reference to NULL afterwards.. then a
> simple check if it is NULL will be sufficient.. you can also
> check lock counts on handles if you want to go that far :)
>
> > BTW, thanks to those who did respond.
>
> look for the Mem* API routines.. :)
>
> if i sound abrupt.. thats just the way i am after flying from
> USA and heading straight into email at 7am :) excuse me :P
>
> // az
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.ardiri.com/ <--- free games!
>
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