At 06:11 PM 8/2/00 -0400, John Tobey wrote:
>Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > At 05:39 PM 8/2/00 -0400, John Tobey wrote:
> > > > A scalar is made an object via a call into the perl library. The
> > > > scalar is marked as an object and stuck into a package. Attached to
> > > > the scalar is a pointer to the native object, a pointer to a generic
> > > > dispatch routine, and a pointer to the native destruction routine for
> > > > the object.
> > >
> > >Perhaps add a native mark routine, if we are really GC-agnostic.
> >
> > When the object finally goes out of scope then we call the destroy method
> > and assume that everything hanging off the object pointer is gone. That
> > only leaves the perl bits to clean up, and we know about those.
>
>Don't assume that the Perl interpreter is the sole root of
>accessibility. Maybe some other language has 'us' (i.e., the
>interpreter) as an object and needs to mark all its own objects that
>we refer to for the benefit of its own GC.
Right, and I'm not. The destroy method is really the perl "I'm done with
you" method. Perl calls it when the object falls out of scope and perl
would call the cleanup code for it. The code that owns the object can then
do whatever it needs to. The function should be renamed, I agree.
> > >Native serializer? Equality tester? Type id accessor? What prompts
> > >me to propose these is the struct that evolved in Perlmacs for mixing
> > >Perl and ELisp objects:
> >
> > Feel free to define some recommended functions. Give 'em all upper-case
> > names so they don't get confused with real methods. (I hope) A PERL_
> prefix
> > might not be a bad thing either.
>
>The only one I feel strongly about here is TYPENAME, which should,
>perhaps, be called by Perl's ref() builtin. Hey-- then as a first
>try, method calls could do a Perl fetchmeth()! Wouldn't that spiff!
Yep. :) Make it one of the vtable entries--that way you can get a generic
perl magic cookie pointer and find out what the heck the thing really is.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
