On Friday, 25 October 2013 at 13:26:33 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
On Friday, 25 October 2013 at 13:10:05 UTC, Lionello Lunesu
wrote:
There's a lot of expressiveness that can be added to D
bindings, when compared to the C or C++ headers, for a
particular library:
1. enum names vs prefixes
enum FOO { FOO_A, FOO_B }; -> enum FOO {A,B}
2. enum vs int parameters (based on a lib's documentation)
void takefoo(int) -> void takefoo(FOO)
3. "in" for input buffers (again, based on docs)
int puts(char*) -> puts(in char*)
4. "out" or "ref" for output parameters
void getdouble(double*) -> void getdouble(out double value)
5. D arrays vs length+pointer pairs
void bar(size_t len, int* ptr) -> void bar(int[] a)
6. D array wrappers
void bar(int* ptr, int size) ->
void bar(int[] a) { bar(a.ptr, cast(int)a.length; }
6. library specific sized-int typedefs to D natives
png_uint_16 -> short
These are some of the more trivial ones, but I'd like to see
how other people go about making bindings. Do you keep as
close to C as possible? Or do you "add value" by using more D
style constructs?
L.
I would go for a two stage approach:
1) Write bindings that map as closely as possible to the C API,
only adding anything extra by necessity and/or where it is
transparent in correct usage.
As an aside, I would suggest that function overloads that take
arrays instead of pointer + length is normally a harmless
addition to an otherwise 1:1 set of bindings.
