On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> > In MPI one calls MPI_Comm_free(&comm) to allow the MPI implementation to > set the pointer explicitly to 0 after the object is destroyed. > > In Petsc XXXDestroy() does not pass the pointer (because it seemed too > unnatural to me in 1994) thus not allowing 0ing the pointer. > > Was this a bad design decision? Should it be revisited? > > Barry > > Two use cases > > 1) error detection when someone tries to reuse a freed object > We catch this with other error detection. I do not think we would gain much here. > 2) when removing some objects from a data structure that will be used data > one currently needs to do > > XXXXDestroy(mystruct->something);CHKERRQ(ierr); mystruct->something = 0; > > instead of the cleaner XXXDestroy(&mystruct->something);CHKERRQ(ierr); True, but again I do not think the win is large. Matt -- What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead. -- Norbert Wiener -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.mcs.anl.gov/pipermail/petsc-dev/attachments/20110215/4ac2d365/attachment.html>
