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Timestamp:
Feb 8, 2018, 1:59:12 PM (7 years ago)
Author:
Thierry Delisle <tdelisle@…>
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:
41fcd94, 827a190, c40e7c5
Parents:
4dad189 (diff), c659968 (diff)
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Message:

Merge branch 'master' of plg.uwaterloo.ca:software/cfa/cfa-cc

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1 edited

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  • doc/papers/general/Paper.tex

    r4dad189 reb7f20c  
    12391239In \CFA, the address of a @T&@ is a lvalue @T*@, as the address of the underlying @T@ is stored in the reference, and can thus be mutated there.
    12401240The result of this rule is that any reference can be rebound using the existing pointer assignment semantics by assigning a compatible pointer into the address of the reference, \eg @&r1 = &x;@ above.
    1241 This rebinding can occur to an arbitrary depth of reference nesting; $n$ address-of operators applied to a reference nested $m$ times will produce an lvalue pointer nested $n$ times if $n \le m$ (note that $n = m+1$ is simply the usual C rvalue address-of operator applied to the $n = m$ case).
    1242 The explicit address-of operators can be thought of as ``cancelling out'' the implicit dereference operators, \eg @(&`*`)r1 = &x@ or @(&(&`*`)`*`)r3 = &(&`*`)r1@ or even @(&`*`)r2 = (&`*`)`*`r3@ for @&r2 = &r3@.
     1241This rebinding can occur to an arbitrary depth of reference nesting; loosely speaking, nested address-of operators will produce an lvalue nested pointer up to as deep as the reference they're applied to.
     1242These explicit address-of operators can be thought of as ``cancelling out'' the implicit dereference operators, \eg @(&`*`)r1 = &x@ or @(&(&`*`)`*`)r3 = &(&`*`)r1@ or even @(&`*`)r2 = (&`*`)`*`r3@ for @&r2 = &r3@.
     1243More precisely:
     1244\begin{itemize}
     1245        \item
     1246        if @R@ is an rvalue of type {@T &@$_1 \cdots$@ &@$_r$} where $r \ge 1$ references (@&@ symbols) than @&R@ has type {@T `*`&@$_{\color{red}2} \cdots$@ &@$_{\color{red}r}$}, \\ \ie @T@ pointer with $r-1$ references (@&@ symbols).
     1247       
     1248        \item
     1249        if @L@ is an lvalue of type {@T &@$_1 \cdots$@ &@$_l$} where $l \ge 0$ references (@&@ symbols) then @&L@ has type {@T `*`&@$_{\color{red}1} \cdots$@ &@$_{\color{red}l}$}, \\ \ie @T@ pointer with $l$ references (@&@ symbols).
     1250\end{itemize}
    12431251
    12441252Since pointers and references share the same internal representation, code using either is equally performant; in fact the \CFA compiler converts references to pointers internally, and the choice between them in user code can be made based solely on convenience.
     
    12721280However, this manual approach to memory management is often verbose, and it is useful to manage resources other than memory (\eg file handles) using the same mechanism as memory.
    12731281\CC is well-known for an approach to manual memory management that addresses both these issues, Resource Aquisition Is Initialization (RAII), implemented by means of special \emph{constructor} and \emph{destructor} functions; we have implemented a similar feature in \CFA.
    1274 
    1275 \TODO{Fill out section. Mention field-constructors and at-equal escape hatch to C-style initialization. Probably pull some text from Rob's thesis for first draft.}
    1276 
     1282While RAII is a common feature of object-oriented programming languages, its inclusion in \CFA does not violate the design principle that \CFA retain the same procedural paradigm as C.
     1283In particular, \CFA does not implement class-based encapsulation: neither the constructor nor any other function has privileged access to the implementation details of a type, except through the translation-unit-scope method of opaque structs provided by C.
     1284
     1285In \CFA, a constructor is a function named @?{}@, while a destructor is a function named @^?{}@; like other \CFA operators, these names represent the syntax used to call the constructor or destructor, \eg @x{ ... };@ or @^x{};@.
     1286Every constructor and destructor must have a return type of @void@, and its first parameter must have a reference type whose base type is the type of the object the function constructs or destructs.
     1287This first parameter is informally called the @this@ parameter, as in many object-oriented languages, though a programmer may give it an arbitrary name.
     1288Destructors must have exactly one parameter, while constructors allow passing of zero or more additional arguments along with the @this@ parameter.
     1289
     1290\begin{cfa}
     1291struct Array {
     1292        int * data;
     1293        int len;
     1294};
     1295
     1296void ?{}( Array& arr ) {
     1297        arr.len = 10;
     1298        arr.data = calloc( arr.len, sizeof(int) );
     1299}
     1300
     1301void ^?{}( Array& arr ) {
     1302        free( arr.data );
     1303}
     1304
     1305{
     1306        Array x;
     1307        `?{}(x);`       $\C{// implicitly compiler-generated}$
     1308        // ... use x
     1309        `^?{}(x);`      $\C{// implicitly compiler-generated}$
     1310}
     1311\end{cfa}
     1312
     1313In the example above, a \emph{default constructor} (\ie one with no parameters besides the @this@ parameter) and destructor are defined for the @Array@ struct, a dynamic array of @int@.
     1314@Array@ is an example of a \emph{managed type} in \CFA, a type with a non-trivial constructor or destructor, or with a field of a managed type.
     1315As in the example, all instances of managed types are implicitly constructed upon allocation, and destructed upon deallocation; this ensures proper initialization and cleanup of resources contained in managed types, in this case the @data@ array on the heap.
     1316The exact details of the placement of these implicit constructor and destructor calls are omitted here for brevity, the interested reader should consult \cite{Schluntz17}.
     1317
     1318Constructor calls are intended to seamlessly integrate with existing C initialization syntax, providing a simple and familiar syntax to veteran C programmers and allowing constructor calls to be inserted into legacy C code with minimal code changes.
     1319As such, \CFA also provides syntax for \emph{copy initialization} and \emph{initialization parameters}:
     1320
     1321\begin{cfa}
     1322void ?{}( Array& arr, Array other );
     1323
     1324void ?{}( Array& arr, int size, int fill );
     1325
     1326Array y = { 20, 0xDEADBEEF }, z = y;
     1327\end{cfa}
     1328
     1329Copy constructors have exactly two parameters, the second of which has the same type as the base type of the @this@ parameter; appropriate care is taken in the implementation to avoid recursive calls to the copy constructor when initializing this second parameter.
     1330Other constructor calls look just like C initializers, except rather than using field-by-field initialization (as in C), an initialization which matches a defined constructor will call the constructor instead.
     1331
     1332In addition to initialization syntax, \CFA provides two ways to explicitly call constructors and destructors.
     1333Explicit calls to constructors double as a placement syntax, useful for construction of member fields in user-defined constructors and reuse of large storage allocations.
     1334While the existing function-call syntax works for explicit calls to constructors and destructors, \CFA also provides a more concise \emph{operator syntax} for both:
     1335
     1336\begin{cfa}
     1337Array a, b;
     1338a{};                            $\C{// default construct}$
     1339b{ a };                         $\C{// copy construct}$
     1340^a{};                           $\C{// destruct}$
     1341a{ 5, 0xFFFFFFFF };     $\C{// explicit constructor call}$
     1342\end{cfa}
     1343
     1344To provide a uniform type interface for @otype@ polymorphism, the \CFA compiler automatically generates a default constructor, copy constructor, assignment operator, and destructor for all types.
     1345These default functions can be overridden by user-generated versions of them.
     1346For compatibility with the standard behaviour of C, the default constructor and destructor for all basic, pointer, and reference types do nothing, while the copy constructor and assignment operator are bitwise copies; if default zero-initialization is desired, the default constructors can be overridden.
     1347For user-generated types, the four functions are also automatically generated.
     1348@enum@ types are handled the same as their underlying integral type, and unions are also bitwise copied and no-op initialized and destructed.
     1349For compatibility with C, a copy constructor from the first union member type is also defined.
     1350For @struct@ types, each of the four functions are implicitly defined to call their corresponding functions on each member of the struct.
     1351To better simulate the behaviour of C initializers, a set of \emph{field constructors} is also generated for structures.
     1352A constructor is generated for each non-empty prefix of a structure's member-list which copy-constructs the members passed as parameters and default-constructs the remaining members.
     1353To allow users to limit the set of constructors available for a type, when a user declares any constructor or destructor, the corresponding generated function and all field constructors for that type are hidden from expression resolution; similarly, the generated default constructor is hidden upon declaration of any constructor.
     1354These semantics closely mirror the rule for implicit declaration of constructors in \CC\cite[p.~186]{ANSI98:C++}.
     1355
     1356In rare situations user programmers may not wish to have constructors and destructors called; in these cases, \CFA provides an ``escape hatch'' to not call them.
     1357If a variable is initialized using the syntax \lstinline|S x @= {}| it will be an \emph{unmanaged object}, and will not have constructors or destructors called.
     1358Any C initializer can be the right-hand side of an \lstinline|@=| initializer, \eg  \lstinline|Array a @= { 0, 0x0 }|, with the usual C initialization semantics.
     1359In addition to the expressive power, \lstinline|@=| provides a simple path for migrating legacy C code to \CFA, by providing a mechanism to incrementally convert initializers; the \CFA design team decided to introduce a new syntax for this escape hatch because we believe that our RAII implementation will handle the vast majority of code in a desirable way, and we wished to maintain familiar syntax for this common case.
    12771360
    12781361\subsection{Default Parameters}
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