QList class member and item operations

[whites11]

Hi all.
i have a non-really-qt related newbie problem that you surely can solve easily.

i have a class 'Model' which holds some members. one of thos is a QList.
this is the code for that class:

Header:

#ifndef MODEL_H
#define MODEL_H
 
#include <QList>
 
class Model
{
  public:
    Model();
    QList<QString> list() const;
 
  private:
 
  QList<QString> m_list;
};
 
#endif // MODEL_H

#ifndef MODEL_H
#define MODEL_H

#include <QList>

class Model
{
  public:
    Model();
    QList<QString> list() const;
    
  private:
    
  QList<QString> m_list;
};

#endif // MODEL_H

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cpp

#include "model.h"
#include <QString>
 
Model::Model() 
{
  m_list.append(QString("item1"));
  m_list.append(QString("item2"));
}
 
QList<QString> Model::list() const
{
  return m_list;
}

#include "model.h"
#include <QString>

Model::Model() 
{
  m_list.append(QString("item1"));
  m_list.append(QString("item2"));
}

QList<QString> Model::list() const
{
  return m_list;
}

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when i execute this snippet of code:

Model m;
 
qDebug() << "Before clear()";
for(int i=0;i<m.list().count();i++)
{
    qDebug() << m.list().at(i);
}
 
m.list().clear();
 
qDebug() << "After clear()";      
for(int i=0;i<m.list().count();i++)
{
    qDebug() << m.list().at(i);
}

Model m;
      
qDebug() << "Before clear()";
for(int i=0;i<m.list().count();i++)
{
    qDebug() << m.list().at(i);
}
      
m.list().clear();

qDebug() << "After clear()";      
for(int i=0;i<m.list().count();i++)
{
    qDebug() << m.list().at(i);
}

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i get this output:

"Before clear()"
"item1" 
"item2" 
"After clear()"
"item1" 
"item2"

"Before clear()"
"item1" 
"item2" 
"After clear()"
"item1" 
"item2"

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i think that the problem is the fact that calling m.list() returns me a copy of the QList instead of a reference to it.
i think that one way to solve this is returning a pointer to the QList instead, but i'm wondering if there is another way to do this avoiding pointers.

sorry for the long post and thanks if you read since here

[aamer4yu]

i think that the problem is the fact that calling m.list() returns me a copy of the QList instead of a reference to it.

Yes it returns a copy as per the implementation you have done !
What do you want reference for ? May be if you tell what you want to do more, we can suggest some better way.

[whites11]

the needs i have on that member are:

insert a new item in the list;
get all items;
delete all items;

by now, i have those 3 functions exposed in 3 public methods in my model:

insertItem(QString item); //note that the type is not QString normally
items();
clearItems();

i think this is a fat interface, because the method items().clear() exists but "doesn't work" and clearItems() shouldn't be there.
hope my needs are clear