Re: How do I get this to work??

[warwicks@telusplanet.net (Chris Warwick)]

In article <771bl9$sla$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote:

>You can't have it both ways, If you insist on structuring
>your program in a manner that leaves it open to the
>possibilities of dangling pointers, then you have to use
>Unchecked_Access. 

I guess this where I get confused. If I want to pass a pointer amoungst these 
functions/procedures I have to define the type at the package level. As a 
result there is no way for someone to define an instance of the pointer at a 
lower level, i.e., as a local variable within a procedure. Another way to get 
this to function would be to define as instance of the pointer as a global 
variable for the package, but then I have to mutex it to prevent different 
tasks from getting messed up (which seems unnecessarily awkward).

I think I understand the rules, but I am confused as to how this "should" 
work.

>Proper restructuring can often, but not
>always, remove the need for this. Note that
>Unchecked_Access is of course no more dangerous from the
>point of view of accessibility violations than 'Address.
>Does 'Address make you equally uneasy? If not you are being
>over concerned at names, when functionality is more
>significant!

I've got it working... My uneasyness stems from the fact that when I ran into 
unchecked_conversion I was able to get someone to explain to me how it really 
was "supposed" to work, and once I understood, I agreed. Thus far I still do 
not understand how a package can export a "useful" pointer definition...