Re: [Caml-list] what magic is this?

["Jack Andrews" <effbiae@ivorykite.com>]

> External functions starting with a % are primitives that are
> directly compiled by the ocamlopt compiler into specific code,
> without the overhead of a function call.

oooh - nice.

now a request.  it would be *really* nice if there were some public
%primitives that could be used by the FFI user.

i'm thinking they would be similar to the bigarray_ref/set primitives, but
would publish a contract for the lib writer.

this would be something to set ocaml apart (not that it isn't set apart
already)  a fast FFI is something that languages lack - i wrote a
benchmark for java's JNI that demonstrated the problem of needing to
optimise the loop  while(next())set(get());  (google for jni benchmark).

i'd propose that:
  - in the C code, the first member of a custom struct is a pointer
      eg:  struct CUST
           {  void *ptr;
              int   size;
           };

  - values are allocated as usual:
     value vcust=alloc_custom(&ops,sizeof(struct CUST),x,y);

  - four new primitives are available for use in ml file:
      external   get_int : <cust_type> -> int -> int   = "%ffi_get_int"
      external get_float : <cust_type> -> int -> float = "%ffi_get_float"
      external   set_int : <cust_type> -> int -> int -> unit =
                                                         "%ffi_set_int"
      external set_float : <cust_type> -> int -> float -> unit =
                                                         "%ffi_set_float"

it would take me a week to work out how to implement these primitives, but
one of you ocaml guys could do it a lot quicker.  please?  you'd only have
to re-write it after i made a complete bodge of it :)

thanks in advance,


jack.

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