Releasing Aliased Variables

[Byron Kauffman <byronbkauffman@netscape.net>]

I'm having a problem understanding what defining a variable as aliased
does. Is there a problem with releasing an aliased pointer? Can or
should you even alias a pointer?

I'm using  DirectSound on NT using WinAPI bindings provided by Aonix to
play sounds with my application. To make a long story short, the
procedure you follow is to create a directsound object, create a primary
buffer, and create secondary buffers with all your sounds. Then, when
you're about to shut down the app, you call WinAPI release methods to
release the secondary buffers, the primary buffer, and the directsound
object, in that order. If anything happens to screw up the shutdown and
the objects aren't released, it's only a matter of time before you have
to reboot to reclaim the memory.

I'm declaring all of the directsound objects as aliased, which solved a
problem I was having creating the objects ( it looked like some very
large buffers were being created on the stack). What's happening now is
that the release procedure is bombing down in the Windows code, so
control never returns.