I think you'll find that design decision predates the people on this list. Performance is probably the secondary reason. The first is probably that it makes lifetime management of the objects easier -- you just "release" your reference to the object and don't have to worry about whether it needs to be freed.
Regards, Steven -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of morchid fatima Sent: Wednesday, 13 April 2005 3:47 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: resources rather than values in openSSL functions -----Message d'origine----- De : [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] la part de Michael Southwell Envoy� : samedi 9 avril 2005 00:54 � : [email protected] Cc : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Objet : resources rather than values in openSSL functions Chris Snyder and I are writing a book entitled "Pro PHP Security" to be published by Apress. We have written the following there: "The openSSL functions tend to deal with resources, in-memory pointers to keys, certificates, etc, rather than the actual values themselves; even on export, you pass a variable to the function and the exported value is returned by reference. Our inference is that the authors of the module wished to limit the number of copies of these values in memory, both for performance and security reasons." Can anyone verify whether this is indeed the reason, or if not, explain what the reason is? Thanks very much in advance. Michael Southwell, Vice President for Education New York PHP http://nyphp.org/twoday - In-depth PHP Training Courses ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List [email protected] Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List [email protected] Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List [email protected] Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
