Names and fullnames

A reference counting object can be identified by a name. A name consists of a string of characters whose length must not be greater than KMaxName, a symbol defined in e32std.h.

A name can contain any character except: *, ? and :, i.e. the characters asterisk, question mark and single colon. The system static function User::ValidateName() is available to do this.

A reference counting object can also be identified by its full name. This is descriptive of the reference counting object's ownership hierarchy, i.e. it is a name that identifies the reference counting object in the context of its owning reference counting object.

The full name is a concatenation of:

the name of the owning reference counting object
a double colon ::
the name of the reference counting object

The length of a full name must not be greater than KMaxFullName, a symbol defined in e32std.h.

For example, given the three CObject derived objects: x, y and z with names: one, two and three respectively, where x is owned by y and y, in turn, is owned by z:

_LIT(KTxtOne,"one"); _LIT(KTxtTwo,"two"); _LIT(KTxtThree,"three"); class CSomeClass : public CObject { ... }; ... CSomeClass* x; CSomeClass* y; CSomeClass* z; ... x = new(ELeave) CSomeClass; y = new(ELeave) CSomeClass; z = new(ELeave) CSomeClass; ... x-> SetName(KTxtOne); y-> SetName(KTxtTwo); z-> SetName(KTxtThree); ... x->SetOwner(y); y->SetOwner(z); ...

the full name of x is three::two::one
the full name of y is three::two
the full name of z is three, the same as its name.

Names give reference counting objects an identity and are used when searching for a specific object or a group of related objects.

Global Kernel objects have names; this is how global Kernel objects such as semaphores, mutexes etc. can be found.