C / C++ / MFC

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

Pointers are an intrinsic concept in C++

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

Uhm.. that is a rather dull guideline. Just because some academic has decided that references are better than pointers (which the majority of the C++ community uses), it's counter productive NOT to use them in cases like this, as it would cut your development by at least an hour (seeing that you posted this approximately an hour ago).

Zac Howland wrote:

Knowing how to use references increases code readability, maintainability

Zac Howland wrote:

In general, if you can get away with not using pointers, you should do so.

Zac Howland wrote:

and decreases the liklihood of bugs being introduced via improper usage of pointers.

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

That I don't buy. The only thing that differs between references and pointers in terms of readability are "->" vs "." and "*" vs "&". If anything, references goes against readability, because it's not obvious by seeing the usage of a variable whether it's by value or by reference. With a pointer, it becomes quite obvious.

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

References also have a cumbersome feature which is not always possible to overcome. You can't assign a reference later on - it must be initialized. That is not always possible

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

Also, you do not have the option to represent "no object" with references (unless you use unsafe methods which aren't portable).

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

The only time I use references are when "no object" isn't an option. In the case of the OP, a reference isn't worthwhile as it doesn't cope well with the NULL case - an expected case it turned out later in a clarification by the OP's author. Returning a status value indicating success is not a desired either as it requires an extra copy which may not be doable if the state of the job object is to be visible to all.

class MutexHolder
{
public:
	MutexHolder(HANDLE mutex)
	{
		_Mutex = mutex;
		WaitForSingleObject(_Mutex, INFINITE);
		// I believe this should actually be OpenMutex
		// In which case, you would change the constructor arguement to a string
	}

	~MutexHolder()
	{
		ReleaseMutex(_Mutex);
	}

private:
	HANDLE _Mutex;
};

bool job_not_working(const your_deque_type& t)
{
	if (t.m_JobState != JOB_WORKING)
	{
		return true;
	}
}

bool CThreadPool::CJobQueue::getJob(CThreadPool::t_Job& job)
{
	MutexHolder(m_JobListMutex);

	deque<your_deque_type>::iterator it = find_if(m_JobList.begin(), m_JobList.end(), job_not_working);
	if (it != m_JobList.end())
	{
		job = *it;
		job.m_JobState = JOB_WORKING;
		return true;
	}
	return false;
}