So after some thinking i came up with this system. it's not exactly idiomatic form pov of C programming, but it does exactly what i want and seems to work well with limited number of arguments (0-7 arguments, 0-1 return value).
Key insights:
- void/unit/empty/none type that most prominent languages have is there not just for mathematical completeness but allows to check type signatures more easily.
- we normally use integers as tag types and therefore type identity checks become integer comparison. we can extend this analogy to function types, which become like strings (where data types are individual characters), and comparing function types is mostly identical to string comparison. moreover, we can encode function types exactly like we encode strings: with fixed length (my approach), with known width (like most modern languages encode strings), null-terminated (useing the void/unit type tag as null), we can use utf-8-like compression on data type tags (if we have, say, uint32_t tags), we can store function's signature as "umbra-strings", it may be possible to use string hashing functions on these signatures, etc.
- return type should be the first "character" in the function type string, it actually simplifies function type comparisons (not that much, but still).
- there should be special void* / any type that matches any other characters (that's the only difference between function type comparison and string comparison).
- this approach can be trivially extended to variadic arguments, by adding special flag to function signature.
limitations:
- type unions / abstract types are not very easy to encode in this system (probably needs some sort of separate lookup table system).
- there seems to be no good way to deal with key=value arguments in this sort of paradigm, but maybe it's better to just have a map/dict type and pass it as a single argument to functions.
below is the prototype i've ended up with for now:
#include <assert.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdint.h>
// type system. for now only numeric types,
// but can be extended to arrays, strings & custom types
typedef union TPun TPun;
typedef struct Obj Obj;
union TPun{ // for type punning
uintptr_t Any; void* P; Obj (*Fn)(Obj *arg7);
uint8_t U8; uint16_t U16; uint32_t U32; uint64_t U64;
int8_t I8; int16_t I16; int32_t I32; int64_t I64;
float F32; double F64;
};
struct Obj {uint16_t T; TPun V;};
typedef enum {
T_Unit = 0, T_Any=1, T_P = 2, T_Fn=3,
T_U8=4, T_U16=5, T_U32=6, T_U64=7,
T_I8=8, T_I16=9, T_I32=10, T_I64=11,
T_F32=12, T_F64=13,
} TBase;
const char * TBaseNames[14] = {
"Unit", "Any", "Ptr", "Fn",
"U8", "U16", "U32", "U64",
"I8", "I16", "I32", "I64",
"F32", "F64",
};
// dispatch system
typedef struct {uint16_t retT; uint16_t aT[7]; void* fn;} Method7;
typedef struct {uint16_t len; uint16_t cap; Method7*methods;} Dispatch7;
// Dispatch is a dynamic array of signatures + pointers
int find_method7(Dispatch7 *disp, uint16_t sig[8]){
for (int i=0; i<(int) disp->len; i++) {
Method7*m = &disp->methods[i];
uint16_t* msig = (uint16_t*) m;
int sig_match = 1;
for (int a = 0; a<8; a++) {
sig_match &= (sig[a] == T_Any) | (msig[a] == T_Any) | (msig[a] == sig[a]);
// any type is expected | returns untyped | types match
}
if (sig_match) {return i;}
}
return -1;
}
int put_method7(Dispatch7 *disp, Method7*meth){
int i = find_method7(disp, (uint16_t*) meth);
if (i != -1) { // substitute
disp->methods[i] = *meth;
return i;
} else { // append
if ((disp->cap-disp->len)==0) {// realloc
uint32_t newcap;
if (disp->cap == 0) newcap=1;
else if (disp->cap==1) newcap=4;
else newcap=disp->cap+4;
disp->methods = reallocarray(disp->methods, disp->cap+4, sizeof(Method7));
assert(disp->methods && "don't forget to buy some RAM");
disp->cap = newcap;
} // append
i = disp->len;
disp->len++;
disp->methods[i] = *meth;
return i;
}
}
int call7(Dispatch7*disp, Obj args[8]){
uint16_t sig[8];
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) {sig[i] = args[i].T;}
int i = find_method7(disp, sig);
if (i == -1) return 1;
TPun fn; fn.Fn = disp->methods[i].fn;
args[0] = fn.Fn(&args[1]);
return 0;
}
void clear_args7(Obj args[8]){
for (int i = 0; i<8; i++){
args[i].T = T_Unit;//0
args[i].V.Any = 0;
}
args[0].T = T_Any; // by default no expectation of return type,
// if particular type should be matched, it must be set explicitly
}
// example functions
Obj f_int(Obj *args){
printf("int x = %ld\n", args[0].V.I64);
return ((Obj) {T_Unit,{.Any=0}});
}
Obj int_f_int(Obj *args){
printf("int x = %ld ; return int x = %ld \n", args[0].V.I64, args[0].V.I64+5);
return (Obj) {T_I64,{.I64=args[0].V.I64+5}}; // to test returns
}
Obj f_float(Obj *args) {
printf("float x = %f\n", args[0].V.F32);
return (Obj) {T_Unit,{.Any=0}};
}
Obj f_int_float(Obj *args) {
printf("int x = %ld ; float y = %f\n", args[0].V.I64, args[1].V.F32);
return (Obj) {T_Unit,{.Any=0}};
}
Method7 ms[4] = {
{0, T_I64, 0,0,0,0,0,0, f_int},
{T_I64, T_I64, 0,0,0,0,0,0, int_f_int},
{0, T_F32, 0,0,0,0,0,0, f_float},
{0, T_I64, T_F32, 0,0,0,0,0, f_int_float},
};
Dispatch7 f = {4, 4, ms};
int main(){
Obj args[8];
clear_args7(args);
args[1] = (Obj) {T_I64,{.I64=5}};
call7(&f, args); // int x = 5
assert((args[0].T == T_Unit) && "void_f_int should be called");
clear_args7(args);
args[0].T = T_I64;
args[1] = (Obj) {T_I64,{.I64=5}};
call7(&f, args); // int x = 5
assert((args[0].T == T_I64) && "inf_f_int should be called");
assert((args[0].V.I64 == 10) && "int_f_int should return 10");
clear_args7(args);
args[1] = (Obj) {T_F32,{.F32=6.5}};
call7(&f, args); // float y = 6.50000
clear_args7(args);
args[1] = (Obj) {T_I64, {.I64=7}};
args[2] = (Obj) {T_F32,{.F32=8.5}};
call7(&f, args); // int x = 7 ; float y = 8.50000
clear_args7(args);
args[1] = (Obj) {T_F32,{.F32=9.5}};
args[2] = (Obj) {T_I64, {.I64=10}};
int i = call7(&f, args);
assert((i != 0) && "should fail");
}
