RPC_X_NULL_REF_POINTER - what?

I just came across a problem where IEnumFoo::Next was returningRPC_X_NULL_REF_POINTER. Of course, the first thing that I did wasundertake a search in MSDN, and with Google to see if I could find anyexplanation of what the problem is.

Of course, all I managed to find was about 60 copies of what winerror.h says. Some of them were translated into different languages (human and computer). Not a lot of use.

winerror.h simply says "A null reference pointer was passed to the stub."

What it means, however, is that you didn’t pay any attention to the parameters of IEnumFoo::Next(). Next is prototyped like this:

HRESULT Next (
    [in] ULONG celt,
    [out, size_is(celt)] Foo rgelt[],
    [out] ULONG *pceltFetched);

The documentation for IEnumFoo::Next states that the last parameter (pceltFetched) can be NULL, if and only if celt is equal to one.

The difficulty here comes from trying to marshal this NULL pointer across an apartment or process boundary. It’s not allowed.

The standard Enum interfaces, e.g. IEnumVARIANT, have to mess around with [local] and [call_as] IDL attributes in order to implement this get-out clause given people by the documentation.

The moral of the story: If you’re going to strictly adhere to the letter of the law, you should do the same. If, on the other hand, you’re feeling lazy (like me), just pass something in pceltFetched.