If I write a function that does a 'tolower()' on each character of a parameter passed into my function, do I have to allocate a new text object and initialize it and copy the data, or can I modify that object in place and return it? Modifying it in place will save the overhead of an alloc call, and on a large database, that could add up. right now, I am allocating a new data buffer of exactly the same size and it seems like a waste. Secondly, if I modify the data length of an object, as: VARDATA(field) = nn, making sure that 'nn' is smaller than the origial length, with this affect the memory management? In short, can we modify text * objects passed to a C function, and can we shrink the length field without any ill effects? (Doing so will reduce quite a bit of memory allocation overhead I am doing.) __________________________________________________ Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
