Hi Clément, On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 5:35 AM, Clément Bera <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi All, > > It seems Pharo is lacking the slotAt: / slotAt:put: primitive and that the > instVarAt: / instVarAt:put: primitive is not doing what it says it does. > When I look at Object>>#instVarAt: I see: > > "[...]Answer a fixed variable in an object. The numbering of the variables > corresponds to the named instance variables, followed by the indexed > instance > variables. Fail if the index is not an Integer or is not the index of a > fixed variable[...]" > > Now in Pharo 7 when one does: > > #(iv1) instVarAt: 1, one gets #iv1. > But the failure code should indeed answer #iv1. > So the comment is wrong. > > The reason for this is that instVarAt: / instVarAt:put: should be > primitive 73/74, while they are in Pharo 173/174 (primitive > slotAt:/slotAt:put:). > Why do you say "should"? The 173/174 primitives work well and avoid unnecessary primitive failures (which is why they're there). > The slot primitive access pointer slots of objects, whichever inst var or > variable fields. A good example would be: > > | t | > t := #temp. > [ t ] instVarAt: 4, one gets #temp > > So I have two solutions for this problem: > 1) We change the instVarAt: / instVarAt:put: primitives comments to match > the slotAt: / slotAt:put: behavior, and in Pharo instVarAt: / > instVarAt:put: means in factslotAt: / slotAt:put: . > This is the performant solution, because... > 2) We change the instVarAt: / instVarAt:put: primitives to primitive 73 > and 74, we introduce slotAt: / slotAt:put: with primitive 173/174 and we > ask everyone to fix their code relying on instVarAt: / instVarAt:put: > acting as slotAt: / slotAt:put: > Early in Squeak Spur testing Chris Muller noticed a slow down in his code He was accessing an Array using instVarAt:, which was failing because he was using it to access an indexed field in an Array. Now in Spur the VM must scan the object graph of a primitive's receiver and arguments to some depth on primitive failure to follow forwarders. Because a) at that time the VM computed a depth > 0 for instVarAt:[put:] it scanned the whole array on each access, and b) the Array was large, this meant that the failures were very expensive. So I added the slot primitives, since the old 73/74 primitive pair were only used in the instVarAt:[put:] methods that accessed indexable slots on failure. So the new 173/174 pair subsumed the 73/74 pair. I eventually added an accessorDepth: pragma rot specify the accessor depth manually when the automatically computed depth is too deep. It is for at:[put:] because the String version of the at: 60 primitive appears to access the innards of non-immediate Characters (it doesn't do this in Spur, but the depth inferencer isn't clever enough to notice). So primitiveAt looks like: primitiveAt <accessorDepth: 0> self commonAt: false So we could go back to using 73/74 for instVarAt:[put:] provided that their accessorDepth ends up being 0, which likely means they will require the pragma. But I think the simplest thing is to keep using 173/174. Here's the Squeak code: Object>>instVarAt: index "Primitive. Answer a fixed variable in an object. The numbering of the variables corresponds to the named instance variables, followed by the indexed instance variables. Fail if the index is not an Integer or is not the index of a fixed or indexed variable. Essential. See Object documentation whatIsAPrimitive." <primitive: 173 error: ec> self primitiveFailed Object>>instVarAt: index put: anObject "Primitive. Store a value into a fixed variable in an object. The numbering of the variables corresponds to the named instance variables, followed by the indexed instance variables. Fail if the index is not an Integer or is not the index of a fixed or indexed variable. Essential. See Object documentation whatIsAPrimitive." <primitive: 174 error: ec> self primitiveFailed I've attached these methods. What do you think ? > I think for Spur it makes sense to use 173/174. > > Best, > > > -- > Clément Béra > Pharo consortium engineer > https://clementbera.wordpress.com/ > Bâtiment B 40, avenue Halley 59650 > <https://maps.google.com/?q=40,+avenue+Halley+59650%C2%A0Villeneuve+d'Ascq&entry=gmail&source=g>Villeneuve > d > <https://maps.google.com/?q=40,+avenue+Halley+59650%C2%A0Villeneuve+d'Ascq&entry=gmail&source=g> > 'Ascq > <https://maps.google.com/?q=40,+avenue+Halley+59650%C2%A0Villeneuve+d'Ascq&entry=gmail&source=g> > -- _,,,^..^,,,_ best, Eliot
Object-instVarAtput.st
Description: Binary data
Object-instVarAt.st
Description: Binary data
