[Haskell-cafe] Re: Could FFI support pass-by-value of structs?

John Meacham john at repetae.net
Wed Jul 1 17:07:58 EDT 2009


On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 02:22:36PM -0300, Maurí­cio wrote:
>> Yeah, I'm not suggesting going via Storable (for all those reasons),
>> just extending the FFI to say tuples of FFI types get passed as the
>> corresponding C ABI structs. All the magic to match the current platform
>> C ABI then lives in the compiler.
>
> Agree. The tuples idea is far better than my first sugestion
> on Storable instances.
>
>> I was only half-serious in suggesting this btw, though as far as I can
>> see it should actually work. It doesn't help with unions of course and
>> it adds complexity to the compiler.
>
> :(
>
> The only known case I have of this beeing important is on GNU GSL,
> where the complex functions use a complex type defined as a struct
> (with a size 2 array as the only member). This actually just
> emulates the 'complex' type of C99, I'm almost sure.

I don't know whether it is required that Complex be represented in such
a way though.


> Do you imagine an objection on creating a ticket asking for
> something like CComplex on Foreign.C.Types?

No, I would like it. Also add a 'CBool' that maps to the calling
convention for _Bool while you are at it. 

You would need CComplexFloat and CComplexDouble... or perhaps we should
just define that  'Complex CFloat' and 'Complex CDouble' are FFI-able
types in the obvious way. that is probably better actually.

Another FFI related extension I have wanted at times is making user
defined types that derive an 'Enum' instance FFI-able, with an 'int'
calling convention, translated via toEnum and fromEnum. 

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/


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