Dan Sugalski:
# At 10:26 AM -0800 2/26/02, Brent Dax wrote:
# >That'll just give us an explosion of wrapper types.
#
# Not wrapper types, no. But 'different' types, yes.
#
# Extenders will probably see things like:
#
# typedef void PMC;
#
# or
#
# typedef char PMC;
#
# rather than the actual struct.
Why not do a forward declaration of a PMC struct?
pmc.h:
struct pmc;
typedef struct pmc PMC;
#ifdef PARROT_IN_CORE
struct pmc {
...
};
#endif
BTW, that's Parrot_PMC, right? Remember my statement about reserving
everything beginning with 'P'...
# >Like it or not,
# >embedders (and extenders--don't forget about them) will need
# to do some
# >simple operations on PMCs and strings. We need to accommodate that.
#
# Right, but that's what the wrapper library is for. We will have a lot
# of simple functions that have just a line or two of real code behind
# them. That's OK--it's the only way to guarantee backwards
# compatibility in the future.
How do we decide what's worth wrapping? Let's take the string library,
for example. string_make is an obvious shoe-in. Probably string_concat
and string_substr too. What about string_ord? string_transcode? Where
do you draw the line?
I know you think that we just need get/set on PMCs, but I think we also
need simple operations--[+-*/%_x]. Method calls and indexing are
probably necessary too. I think we can have just a few functions while
still being very useful:
PMC* pmc_new(interpreter, type)
Parrot_Int pmc_get_int(interpreter, pmc);
void pmc_set_int(interpreter, pmc, int);
Parrot_Float pmc_get_float(interpreter, pmc);
void pmc_set_float(interpreter, pmc, float);
Parrot_String pmc_get_string(interpreter, pmc);
void pmc_set_string(interpreter, pmc, string);
PMC* pmc_unop(interpreter, char unop, pmc);
/* used like dest=pmc_unop(interpreter, '-', src) */
PMC* pmc_binop(interpreter, pmc, char binop, pmc);
/* used like dest=pmc_binop(interpreter, lhs, '*', rhs) */
PMC* pmc_method(interpreter, pmc, methodname);
/* should methodname be STRING* or char*? Hmm... */
PMC* pmc_get_indexed(interpreter, pmc, key);
void pmc_set_indexed(interpreter, pmc, key, pmc);
KEY* key_make_int(interpreter, int);
KEY* key_make_float(interpreter, float);
KEY* key_make_string(interpreter, string);
KEY* key_make_pmc(interpreter, pmc);
(Those are without the Parrot_ prefix.)
--Brent Dax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Parrot Configure pumpking, regex hacker, embedding coder, and boy genius
#define private public
--Spotted in a C++ program just before a #include
