Add comment clarifying the difference between 'alias' and 'indirection'

fields in sym_node_t.
This commit is contained in:
osku 2006-03-31 04:58:45 +00:00
parent 8289f64a58
commit 90969c9402

View file

@ -83,6 +83,19 @@ struct sym_node_struct{
been allocated from dynamic memory and it should be freed when the
symbol table is discarded */
/* 'alias' and 'indirection' are almost the same, but not quite.
'alias' always points to the primary instance of the variable, while
'indirection' does the same only if we should use the primary
instance's values for the node's data. This is usually the case, but
when initializing a cursor (e.g., "DECLARE CURSOR c IS SELECT * FROM
t WHERE id = x;"), we copy the values from the primary instance to
the cursor's instance so that they are fixed for the duration of the
cursor, and set 'indirection' to NULL. If we did not, the value of
'x' could change between fetches and things would break horribly.
TODO: It would be cleaner to make 'indirection' a boolean field and
always use 'alias' to refer to the primary node. */
sym_node_t* indirection; /* pointer to
another symbol table
node which contains