On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 2:32 PM Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > > 2. I don't like the "palloc_ptrtype" name at all. I see that you > borrowed that name from talloc, but I doubt that's a precedent that > very many people are familiar with.
> To me it sounds like it might > allocate something that's the size of a pointer, not the size of the > pointed-to object. I have to confess though that I don't have an > obviously better name to suggest. "palloc_pointed_to" would be > clear perhaps, but it's kind of long. > I agree that ptrtype reads "the type of a pointer". This may not be a C-idiom but the pointed-to thing is a "reference" (hence pass by value vs pass by reference). So: palloc_ref(myvariablepointer) will allocate using the type of the referenced object. Just like _array and _obj, which name the thing being used as a size template as opposed to instantiate which seems more like another word for "allocate/palloc". David J. P.S. Admittedly I'm still getting my head around reading pointer-using code (I get the general concept but haven't had to code them).... - lockrelid = palloc(sizeof(*lockrelid)); + lockrelid = palloc_ptrtype(lockrelid); // This definitely seems like an odd idiom until I remembered about short-lived memory contexts and the lost pointers are soon destroyed there. So lockrelid (no star) is a pointer that has an underlying reference that the macro (and the orignal code) resolves via the * I cannot reason out whether the following would be equivalent to the above: lockrelid = palloc_obj(*lockrelid); I assume not because: typeof(lockrelid) != (*lockrelid *)
