[ici]

Why are client indexes not referenced in most of SourceMod's forwards? Is it bad if I reference client indexes in my functions? If somebody could give me an explanation, I'd be thankful!

[Mitchell]

because why would you waste your time converting a client to a reference index then immediately undoing that? Client indexes are always going to be the same. Especially since there is disconnect events and connect events. entities other than the player are good for referencing because you cannot really tell when the entity will be destroyed.

However you should Serialize your client indices if you are using Timers and passing in the client, to make sure it is the same client that issued the timer.

[ici]

Not this kind of entity reference indexes. Sorry, I meant pointers. I'm little bit confused right now.

Action:public(victim, &attacker, &inflictor, &Float:damage, &damagetype)

Aren't &attacker, &inflictor, &Float:damage and &damagetype pointers?

Param_CellByRef - A non-Float cell by reference
I thought that this is a pointer^

I've always thought that the '&' symbol stood for a pointer. Is that not correct?

[WildCard65]

Originally Posted by ici Not this kind of entity reference indexes. Sorry, I meant pointers. I'm little bit confused right now. Action:public(victim, &attacker, &inflictor, &Float:damage, &damagetype) Aren't &attacker, &inflictor, &Float:damage and &damagetype pointers? Param_CellByRef - A non-Float cell by reference I thought that this is a pointer^ I've always thought that the '&' symbol stood for a pointer. Is that not correct?

pointers are a c++ term for variables, & in method params definition means reference.

[Mitchell]

Sorry i thought you meant you were serializing clients and passing that into your functions. (via EntIndexToEntRef)
The only reason to reference the client indices is if you plan on having some other plugin call it and change the index then return for you to handle it.

[ici]

So referencing is just serializing a variable? I thought that the '&' symbol meant do not recreate / initialize a new instance of the variable that is pushed to the function.

In the following example:

PHP Code:

public OnClientPostAdminCheck(client)
{
    if (!IsValidClient(client) || IsFakeClient(client))
    {
        return;
    }
    
    decl String:sClientAuth[25];
    GetClientAuthString(client, sClientAuth, sizeof(sClientAuth));
    
    new Handle:hDataPack = CreateDataPack();
    WritePackCell(hDataPack, client);
    WritePackString(hDataPack, sClientAuth);
    
    OnPlayerJoin(sClientAuth, hDataPack);
} 


PHP Code:

OnPlayerJoin(const String:sClientAuth[], &Handle:hDataPack) 


should I remove the '&' symbol at &Handle:hDataPack ?

[asherkin]

SourcePawn doesn't have pass-by-value objects bigger than a cell, so you're actually causing a (absolutely tiny) perf cost (for the dereference) by passing by reference when you don't need to.

When you pass a handle to a datapack as a param, you're not making a copy of the contents, the handle itself is a reference to the datapack.