On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:26, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
> >
> > > 2. If the ansewr to 0 or 1 is "no", will there be another standard in
> > > Perl 6?
> >
> > Yes. Whatever we do for Parrot.
>
> Thigs are getting clearer and more confusing ;-)
>
> I am still in the trying-to figure-out-what-the-hell-is-going-on-here
> phase so please bear with me about the stupid questions ;-)
>
> Let me ask one more, and hopefully the last, question; a specific one
> this time:
>
> Say, there is a C library x (libx.{so,a}) which defines a function foo()
> which takes a single argument `struct bar'. The prototype of foo() is
> defined in x.h as:
>
> foo(struct bar);
>
> Actual definition might be a typedef insted of struct bar itself, but
> all the same.
>
> And struct bar has three members: int a, char *b and struct morebar *c.
>
> Now, if one wants to create a Perl[56] binding to the library x, s?he
> will create a module X. A script would look like:
>
> use X;
>
> my %bar = ();
> my %morebar = ();
>
> $morebar{key} = 10;
> $morebar{value} = "ten";
>
> $bar{a} = 10;
> $bar{b} = 'bar b';
> $bar{c} = \%morebar;
>
> foo($bar);
>
> Now, what exactly is going to happen when it comes to the foo($bar)
> call?
Whatever you want to have happen. There's not goign to be anything
automatic happening here, and there's no lurking magic--if the interface
code you've written handles the conversion right, then the conversion will
happen, otherwise it won't.
Now, you could certainly write a PMC class that behaves as a struct (and
we'll likely provide one as part of the core distribution) and prototype
foo() so that it only took things of type bar, and save yourself a lot of
hassle (which is likely the route I'd take) but that's up to the person
who wrote the interface library.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
