NILifiying user variables

[LEGO <luis.ontanon@...>]

Hello,

I'm in the process to embed Lua into ethereal http://www.ethereal.com.

Now, I have a problem.

While scanning a packet a "packet_buffer" object is passed to the
user's dissection function. In ethereal the lifetime of this object is
that of the packet been currently analyzed. The pointer to the
underlying C object is not going to be valid after the function has
returned. If an user (the lua function) saves a copy of this variable
in a global that variable will surely be unusable.

This variables are accessed very often while analyzing packets so
having to either copy them or create and destroy a container that
keeps track o the frame number they come from would sensibly slow down
operation.

What I wondered is whether there is a (relatively fast) way I can make
sure that these variables are either not copied into global variables
(while still giving access to the global environment) or that these
refernces are nil-ified after the dissection/inspection of the current
packet has been done.

Thanks,

Luis

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