Octave Memory Management

[Thomas D. Dean]

I have an .oct file that I want to open a device, return the pointer to 
the device structure.

In octave:
octave> dev_ptr = oct_file("open");
octave> for idx = 1:10
          dat = oct)file()
        endfor
octave> rc = oct_file("close", dev_prt)

In the .cc file,

  OCTAVE_LOCAL_BUFFER(unit32_t, dev_ptr, 1);
  open(&dev_ptr,...)
  if (arg == "open") {
    return dev_ptr;
  }

  if (arg == "close") {
    close(dev_ptr);
  }

  OCTAVE_LOCAL_BUFFER (uint8_t, dat_buf, num_bytes );
  read_device(&dat_buf)

Does octave keep the allocation of dev_ptr between function calls?

Is it possible to use a static variable in the .cc file?  Would I have 
to free it when the device is closed?

I can post the full application if necessary.

Tom Dean