"Stewart, Robert" <Robert.Stewart@sig.com> wrote in message news:DF2E67F3D097004694C8428C70A3FD69046934E01F@msgbal516.ds.susq.com...
As Scott McMurray noted, the call doesn't transfer ownership and isn't polymorphic. However, using a null pointer to indicate the absence of something is idiomatic as Peter Dimov noted. From a purely esthetic point of view, I prefer not having to take the address of the error_code to call such a function.
How does having to pass an address screw up your esthetic view of the code? Maybe you could start redefining the language with some defines (grin). I usually try to avoid non-constant references in my own code, since they are obfuscating the code. I prefer the clarity of using the address operator to tell the person reading the code, what is happening.