Testing a sequence var (was RE: [omniORB] Allocation of memory for sequence "vars")

[Visscher, Bruce]

> In Message <434BF06670A6784D8C9F85B6F598D48F351137 at tvmailp1.rjr.com> ,
>    "Visscher, Bruce" <VISSCHB at rjrt.com> wrote:
> 
> =>I think what got lost in the discussion is that operator 
> new throws an
> =>exception in C++ unless you use an overload declared with 
> "throw()" (which
> =>you would have to go out of your way to do).
> 
>    There could be other cases where you have a method that 
> could return
> a null pointer, though, so it wouldn't hurt to be able to 
> check for it.

Agreed.  I think the discussion took a different turn (as I've
indicated in the subject header.

I think we are in agreement that it would be nice to be able
to use "if(me.operator->())".  Even if the CORBA standard
doesn't expressly allow it (and I take it that at one time 
it actually forbade users from this?) are there any CORBA
implementations where that doesn't work?

So, instead of:

TSeq_var t;
if (afterAwhileIfIFeelLikeIt())
   t=new TSeq;
....
if (t.operator->())
....

I have to write:

TSeq_var t;
bool iGuessIdid=false;
if (afterAwhileIfIFeelLikeIt()) {
   t=new TSeq;
   iGuessIdid=true;
}
....
if (iGuessIdid)
....

If the CORBA C++ mapping won't let me use TSeq_var::operator->()
(so I can pretend it's like a typical smart (e.g. auto_ptr)
pointer) then I wish it would mandate that CORBA::is_nil(TSeq_var)
be defined.

Then maniacal implementations would have their work cut out for
them.

But I guess to be fair, it would be about as easy to always 
initialize the var from an empty sequence and use t->length() instead.

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