Evolving macros, reduce casting in accessors, add const collection access.

[shibboleth/xmltooling.git] / xmltooling / AbstractXMLObject.h

diff --git a/xmltooling/AbstractXMLObject.h b/xmltooling/AbstractXMLObject.h
index 7a4ff1f..251a60f 100644 (file)
--- a/xmltooling/AbstractXMLObject.h
+++ b/xmltooling/AbstractXMLObject.h
@@ -125,11 +125,13 @@ namespace xmltooling {
          * A helper function for derived classes, for assignment of (singleton) XML objects.\r
          * \r
          * It is indifferent to whether either the old or the new version of the value is null. \r
-         * This method will do a safe compare of the objects and will also invalidate the DOM if appropriate\r
+         * This method will do a safe compare of the objects and will also invalidate the DOM if appropriate.\r
+         * Note that since the new value (even if NULL) is always returned, it may be more efficient\r
+         * to discard the return value and just assign independently if a dynamic cast would be involved.\r
          * \r
          * @param oldValue - current value\r
          * @param newValue - proposed new value\r
-         * @return the value to assign \r
+         * @return the new value \r
          * \r
          * @throws XMLObjectException if the new child already has a parent.\r
          */\r