[lldb-dev] Should MyType's synthetic provider be instantiated for MyType* and MyType** ?

[Jim Ingham via lldb-dev]

> On Jul 19, 2021, at 6:24 PM, Vadim Chugunov <vadimcn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 6:02 PM Jim Ingham <jingham at apple.com> wrote:
> You can control whether you want data-formatters on "class Foo" to also match "class Foo *" and "class Foo &" using the --skip-pointers and --skip-references options respectively.
> So this part is clearly is by design.
> 
> As for what the formatter gets passed, your formatter has chosen to see values that are pointers to the type by not passing --skip-pointers, so it makes sense to pass it 
> the pointer - which it after all asked for.  I can't see a strong enough argument either way to want to change the way it currently works, since we might break other people's uses of it.
> 
> Certainly.  I just wish the documentation were more explicit about this quirk.  This behavior is especially confusing because the single indirection case usually works, since pointer.GetChildMemberWithName('...') transparently dereferences.   It starts breaking only at pointer-to-pointer-to-type. 

Feel free to add something you would have found helpful to the documentation.

Jim



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