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

[Maurí­cio]

>> It's not usual, but it is allowed to have values of
>> structs passed between functions directly instead of
>> using pointers: (...)

>> Would it be possible to allow that in Haskell FFI (...)

> There are a couple problems with this. First, the storage layout for a
> given C struct may be radically different depending on the back end,

When you say struct layout, do you mean the offset of diferent
fields? I don't think this would be a problem, as your sugestion
of hsc2hs is one of many solutions to that. I'm not sugesting
that peek and poke methods of Storage instances should be created
automatically, I understand this would not worth the effort.

However, isn't just knowing the size and alignment enough to
write a generic struct handler that, by using the appropriate
calling convention, is going to work with any struct? If not,
I agree with you it's really not worth it (as we can use pointers
as Felipe sugested.

Maurício