> Future improvements
>
> UnsafeBytePointer should eventually support unaligned memory access. I
> believe that we will eventually have a modifier that allows "packed" struct
> members. At that time we may also want to add a "packed" flag to
> UnsafeBytePointer's load and initialize methods.
We should probably call out the fact that `load` and `initialize` require
alignment in the meantime.
> When accessing a memory buffer, it is generally convenient to cast to a type
> with known layout and compute offsets relative to the type's size. This is
> how UnsafePointer<Pointee> works. A generic UnsafeTypePunnedPointer<Pointee>
> could be introduced with the same interface as UnsafePointer<Pointer>, but
> without the strict aliasing requirements. This seems like an overdesign
> simply to avoid calling strideof() in an rare use case, but nothing prevents
> adding this type later.
This need could also be addressed with some additional convenience methods on
UnsafeBytePointer to load or store at a given index, something like:
func load<T>(asArrayOf type: T.Type, at index: Int) -> T {
return (self + strideof(T) * index).load(T)
}
func initialize(asArrayOf type: T.Type, initialValue: T, at index: Int)
{
return (self + strideof(T) * index).initialize(initialValue)
}
-Joe
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