Doesn't matter.  There is still absolutely no reason for the additional 
pointer storage.  I agree with with you "Thinks of it as", but also add 
my own:  think of it as a spinlock function.  It doesn't return any 
value, but you can't touch the locked object(s) before you call the 
function.
The alloc functions return pointers.  The _get functions never need to, 
because logically there should always we at least one ref when we are 
calling _get.  (unless we want _get to notice an OBJ_FREEING flag and 
fail, that is...)
	Jeff
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