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digitalmars.D - Structs implementing interfaces

reply Lars Ivar Igesund <larsivar igesund.net> writes:
Structs in D are very simple which is good, but in some cases they are just
too simple. In many cases you would want to handle struct instances as if
they were Object derivates, by calling methods on them, methods that
implement an interface. The most obvious example is toUtf8 (or toString).
As it is now, for instance in a formatter, if it detects that the input is
a struct, you have no way of figuring out whether the struct implements an
interface or not.

This is thus a request to make it possible to say that a struct implements
an interface and thus can be typeid'ed on other types (interfaces) than
those of the structs themselves. An enumeration of the methods of the
struct would also be nice.

Thanks :)

-- 
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource, #d.tango & #D: larsivi
Dancing the Tango
Mar 03 2007
parent reply Tom S <h3r3tic remove.mat.uni.torun.pl> writes:
Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
 Structs in D are very simple which is good, but in some cases they are just
 too simple. In many cases you would want to handle struct instances as if
 they were Object derivates, by calling methods on them, methods that
 implement an interface. The most obvious example is toUtf8 (or toString).
 As it is now, for instance in a formatter, if it detects that the input is
 a struct, you have no way of figuring out whether the struct implements an
 interface or not.
 
 This is thus a request to make it possible to say that a struct implements
 an interface and thus can be typeid'ed on other types (interfaces) than
 those of the structs themselves. An enumeration of the methods of the
 struct would also be nice.
 
 Thanks :)
If there are no serious technical reasons not to do this, ++votes; // :) -- Tomasz Stachowiak
Mar 03 2007
parent BCS <ao pathlink.com> writes:
Reply to Tom,

 Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
 
 Structs in D are very simple which is good, but in some cases they
 are just too simple. In many cases you would want to handle struct
 instances as if they were Object derivates, by calling methods on
 them, methods that implement an interface. The most obvious example
 is toUtf8 (or toString). As it is now, for instance in a formatter,
 if it detects that the input is a struct, you have no way of figuring
 out whether the struct implements an interface or not.
 
 This is thus a request to make it possible to say that a struct
 implements an interface and thus can be typeid'ed on other types
 (interfaces) than those of the structs themselves. An enumeration of
 the methods of the struct would also be nice.
 
 Thanks :)
 
If there are no serious technical reasons not to do this, ++votes; // :)
The only technical problem with doing this is the way that interfaces are implemented. IIRC when a class implements an interface, a second v-tbl pointer is inserted into the class. The layout of this table is defined by the interface. One of the members (I'll assume the first, but I'm guessing) is the offset between the v-tbl pointer and the beginning of the object. This allows for methods of a class to be called by way of an interfaces something like this: I i; // get fn ptr get this for obj ((*i)[I.method]) ((i + (*i)[0]), /* other args */ ); An alternative implementation that I have floated before would use a pair of pointers, one to the v-tbl and one to the context. A call would look something like this I i; (i.vtbl[I.method])(i.context, /* other args */ ); The down side to this is that it makes a interface instance twice as big and would require all code using interfaces to be recompiled, the up side is that it has no effect what so ever on the layout of the thing that implements the interface. This would allow structs to implement an interface wile still being plain old data. This would also allow for interface literals where the context pointer is a function stack frame as with a delegate.
 
 --
 Tomasz Stachowiak
Mar 04 2007