Heres an odd one, and I haven been able to find anything on it,
probably cause I dont really know of a phrase to search on.

My problem is this.
1> An entity gets created, and is (usually) given a global pointer of some sort.
2> Over time, several other global AND non-global pointer end up aimed at it.
3a> I now ent_remove this entity, and set its global pointer to NULL.
3b> OR I now ent_remove this entity using one of the OTHER pointers, and set it to NULL.
4>>> All the other pointers are still pointing to where it was,and so are invalid.

Is there any way for me to programmatically "find" these pointers and set them to NULL too?
(PS I dont want to have to make all these pointers a pointer-to-a-pointer as its too messy)

Im trying to avoid modifying the "other" functions or pointers at all. I really want to code a
function that will hunt down the pointers to the entity and NULL them.

Any ideas anyone?

Hey, other than scanning through all possible global entity pointers and entity parents i haven't found a way yet either

scan all ents and check if entities match, if they do store this pointer,
ENTITY* global_removal_firm;

then keep scanning, if any more that are found to match set them to NULL,
then remove the global_removal; and set to NULL

Hope this helps

The only way I know of "scan"ing all ents is using ent_next and that only gives me a list of actual entities, not any pointers to them.
Or do you mean some other way to scan than ent_next? I hope so.

Getting a list of all pointers to all entities (or even just ALL pointers) is my goal, but for the life of me I cant see a way to do it yet.
Ive tried several attempts to burrow into the engine, but ent_next giving real entity locations is the closest Ive gotten so far and its of no use.

Well the only way I could think of would be to compare your global variables to the pointer which is supposed to be removed.
Like


This pseudocode shows that it would be practically to keep the global entity pointers in an array to be able to loop through them.

Hope this helps...

greetings
K-Duke

Nice try but no go.
It is un-feasable for me to store all the pointers I want to check in an array.
I want to SCAN and FIND them all, without previously knowing their names or locations.

First of maybe pVars is of help here?

This is only an assumption though theoretically you should be able to scan all global variables by comparing the value starting at pVars, increasingly checking the following pointer up till ((sys_memory - nexus)*1024)/4.

Anyways... maybe you could post some pseudo/example code of what is your intention to do with this?

greetings
K-Duke

Hmm, I'll try looking into the pVars avenue. I thought it was for external (dll) use only.

Sorry, cant pseudo-code anything.
One - Its only theoretical at this point. If it cant be done I want to know now before I NEED it.
Two - My original post is as close to pseudo-code as I can get at this early stage.

But it basically involves simplifying a cross-referential, multi-layered group of linked lists.
If I delete an object from THIS linked list, I want to be able to call one function that can then
scan through "memory" and set all pointers to that object to NULL.
Then the actions associated with those pointers can perform the necessary clean-up operations
when they see the object no longer exists, by checking if(pointer=NULL).
These "other actions" could be linked-list house-keeper actions, OR entity-targetting actions,
Database (in a TEXT) entries or whatever.
I intend this code to develop until it is flexible, so it is not limited to any particular object "type".
I just need help getting started.

I'll start looking at pVars now. Thanks again.