Thank you for your explanations. Having an efficient store/load of pointers over an Object would be very handy indeed, in the meantime I'm using the storage space of a HeapNumber object to store my pointers as you suggested some time ago (I didn't check that a Foreign was related to an External before asking).
I suppose that hacking a new "Opaque" type that behaves like a HeapNumber object from the GC perspective but without any of the number methods should be doable and very useful for embedders. The whole idea, after all, is to have an opaque pointer (from a V8 perspective) inside JS, so I don't need any "services" from V8, just store it and please don't consider it a pointer that should be handled in any way. Cheers! pablo. On 10/06/2012 02:49 PM, Sven Panne wrote: > A Foreign object is *not* a JavaScript object it is intended to be > used only internally. Furthermore, v8's GC needs to distinguish the > objects under its control from the external ones, so we can't simply > put any void* into an internal field. Currently this part of the API > is in a poor and slightly broken state and there have been some > discusssions how to fix it. The probable future API looks like this: > > * A > SetAlignedPointerInInternalField/GetAlignedPointerFromInternalField > will be added, allowing highly efficient stores/loads of > 2-byte-aligned void* to/from internal fields. > > * External will be changed back again to provide a real JavaScript > object, namely one with a hidden field containing a Foreign. This way > *any* void* can be wrapped and stored/loaded via > SetInternalField/GetInternalField and IsExternal will work again. > > Wrap, Unwrap, SetPointerInInternalField and > GetPointerFromInternalField will probably be deprecated and die in > some not-to-far future. > -- > v8-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://groups.google.com/group/v8-users -- v8-users mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/v8-users
