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Feature Requests

highlight references using & in new colour

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T O P I C R E V I E W
Sneaky	Posted - Jul 25 2007 : 07:04:35 AM First up I love VAX and recommend it to all my colleagues. Having just discovered that the Find references tool highlights assignments in a different colour to reading the value of a variable, I was wondering whether taking an address of a variable (i.e. &m_pFoo) should be highlighted in a different colour, especially as this can result in an assignment, for example pUnk->QueryInterface(&pDisp). Normally this would highlight pDisp in blue, even though a value is being assigned to it.
3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First)
feline	Posted - Jul 25 2007 : 2:15:55 PM This idea has a certain appeal, but consider the following functions: void overloadOne(const std::string * const foo) { } void overloadTwo(std::string *foo, int bar) { } when calling the first function "foo" cannot be modified, but when calling the second function "foo" may be modified. To really make this idea work reliably VA would have to consider how the variable was being passed to the function. Unfortunately this is not something we can currently do, since VA does not know which overload you are using when you call this function. This is why when you use alt-g on an overloaded function you are offered all of the overloads, and need to select the one you want to jump to. We are looking into making VA understand overloaded functions, but this has not yet been done.
Sneaky	Posted - Jul 25 2007 : 10:38:38 AM Agreed. But perhaps that suggests that the find references tool should try to highlight in yet another colour if it finds a variable being passed by reference. I think my original point, that the use of the & operator could be highlighted in a third colour, remains valid though. The third colour would simply indicate that the value may change, not that it will change. In the example you cited of taking the address because the function expects a pointer, there's nothing to prevent the implementation of the function changing later to affect the value. I just think it would be helpful to highlight those instances differently to those where the value is just being used.
feline	Posted - Jul 25 2007 : 07:53:22 AM This is an interesting idea. My main concern is that taking the address of a variable is not a reliable indication of anything other than taking the address. I have often had to pass in a pointer simply because the function I was calling expects a pointer, even though it never updates the value of the variable. Consider the function: void updateInt(int &nFoo) { nFoo = 1; } You would call this with the variable directly, but the function will update the variable.

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