RE: Re: QWCCVTDT frustrations

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I looked at that and couldn't make sense for a while. Then I realized 
> that he wasn't "passing a pointer; it only _looks_ like he's passing a 
> pointer because that's how he declared it. He's actually passing the 
> _address_ of the pointer which he's set to be the same as the address 
> that was originally passed in.

You're right, of course.  That explains why his version worked.  He had 
his InVar pointer overlaying the same memory as InFmt (actually, he didn't 
show the code that did that -- but now that you bring it up...)

Granted, doing that is a completely confusing and non-sensical thing to do 
-- if InVar overlays memory containing '*DTS' it won't be a valid pointer 
value -- and therefore is completely useless as a pointer, but since the 
address is all that gets passed to the API anyway, if InVarPtr is set to 
the address of InFmt, it WOULD work.

There's absolutely no practical reason to do that, of course.  (Aside from 
code obfuscation, I suppose.)

I'd really like to understand the rationale behind writing the code that 
way to begin with.  Was it just random trial and error until something 
worked?  Why would you ever do that?  What was the thought process behind 
it?