Re: pointers

[Masum Hasan <masum@cisco.com>]

Andrea Westerinen wrote:

> I didn't see a reply to this, and wasn't in the terminal room.  But ...
> "Pointers" do make sense in an "info model" since there is no implementation
> to point to/from/with/...  It is very reasonable and logical to "refer" to a
> class or an instance.  If this is a "pointer," then I agree but would highly
> recommend the word, "reference," to avoid confusion.
>
> Andrea
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nim@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-nim@ops.ietf.org]On Behalf Of
> Tom Scott
> Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 8:11 AM
> To: case@snmp.com
> Cc: nim@psg.com
> Subject: pointers
>
> Jeffrey,
>
> For the sake of those who didn't hear our conversation in the terminal room
> this morning, please post to the list your clarifications on the use of
> pointers as basic data types.
>
> Specifically, you stated in the NIM BoF yesterday that there should be three
> data types in the model: numbers, characters/strings and pointers. C
> programmers may read more into that statement than is justified.
>
> --Tom
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Tom Nelson Scott             Vedatel Co
> 1411 Sheffield Dr.           Bowling Green OH 43402
> "In IP We Trust"   "E Pluribus Unix"   "Java Rules"
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

My 2 cents worth ...re. pointer vs. reference...

A reference is not necessarily a pointer. A pointer is a low
level construct that points to an address space directly,
whereas a reference may not necessarily. In C++, for example,
a reference is a constant (immutable)  pointer. Java has no
pointers, but primitive and reference types. In various OO
model a reference has been contrued as (a more abstract) OID.
A pointer, for example, is not transferable across process
(address space) boundaries, but a reference (OID) is, since it
is abstract.

In any case....
I came across this list on mpls@uunet mailing list.
What is the charter for NIM?

--Masum

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Masum Z. Hasan, PhD  masum@cisco.com  408 853 5926
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~zmhasan/
---------------------------------------------------------------