Changeset 43c6dc82


Ignore:
Timestamp:
Feb 9, 2018, 5:30:40 PM (6 years ago)
Author:
Aaron Moss <a3moss@…>
Branches:
ADT, aaron-thesis, arm-eh, ast-experimental, cleanup-dtors, deferred_resn, demangler, enum, forall-pointer-decay, jacob/cs343-translation, jenkins-sandbox, master, new-ast, new-ast-unique-expr, new-env, no_list, persistent-indexer, pthread-emulation, qualifiedEnum, resolv-new, with_gc
Children:
48786bc8, cfe2f0a
Parents:
298ed08
Message:

First draft of 0/1 section of paper

File:
1 edited

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  • doc/papers/general/Paper.tex

    r298ed08 r43c6dc82  
    15831583The operator overloading feature of \CFA provides a natural means to implement this truth value comparison for arbitrary types, but the C type system is not precise enough to distinguish an equality comparison with @0@ from an equality comparison with an arbitrary integer or pointer.
    15841584To provide this precision, \CFA introduces a new type @zero_t@ as type type of literal @0@ (somewhat analagous to @nullptr_t@ and @nullptr@ in \CCeleven); @zero_t@ can only take the value @0@, but has implicit conversions to the integer and pointer types so that standard C code involving @0@ continues to work properly.
    1585 With this addition, the \CFA compiler rewrites @if (x)@ and similar expressions to @if (x != 0)@ or the appropriate analogue, and any type @T@ can be made ``truthy'' by defining a single function @int ?!=?(T, zero_t)@.
    1586 
    1587 \TODO{Clean up and integrate this paragraph} As well, restricted constant overloading is allowed for the values @0@ and @1@, which have special status in C, \eg the value @0@ is both an integer and a pointer literal, so its meaning depends on context.
    1588 In addition, several operations are defined in terms values @0@ and @1@, \eg:
    1589 \begin{lstlisting}
    1590 int x;
    1591 if (x) x++                                                                      $\C{// if (x != 0) x += 1;}$
    1592 \end{lstlisting}
    1593 Every @if@ and iteration statement in C compares the condition with @0@, and every increment and decrement operator is semantically equivalent to adding or subtracting the value @1@ and storing the result.
    1594 Due to these rewrite rules, the values @0@ and @1@ have the types @zero_t@ and @one_t@ in \CFA, which allows overloading various operations for new types that seamlessly connect to all special @0@ and @1@ contexts.
    1595 The types @zero_t@ and @one_t@ have special built in implicit conversions to the various integral types, and a conversion to pointer types for @0@, which allows standard C code involving @0@ and @1@ to work as normal.
    1596 
     1585With this addition, the \CFA compiler rewrites @if (x)@ and similar expressions to @if ((x) != 0)@ or the appropriate analogue, and any type @T@ can be made ``truthy'' by defining an operator overload @int ?!=?(T, zero_t)@.
     1586\CC makes types truthy by adding a conversion to @bool@; prior to the addition of explicit cast operators in \CCeleven this approach had the pitfall of making truthy types transitively convertable to any numeric type; our design for \CFA avoids this issue.
     1587
     1588\CFA also includes a special type for @1@, @one_t@; like @zero_t@, @one_t@ has built-in implicit conversions to the various integral types so that @1@ maintains its expected semantics in legacy code.
     1589The addition of @one_t@ allows generic algorithms to handle the unit value uniformly for types where that is meaningful.
     1590\TODO{Make this sentence true} In particular, polymorphic functions in the \CFA prelude define @++x@ and @x++@ in terms of @x += 1@, allowing users to idiomatically define all forms of increment for a type @T@ by defining the single function @T& ?+=(T&, one_t)@; analogous overloads for the decrement operators are present as well.
    15971591
    15981592\subsection{Units}
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