10.1 Polymorphism

You have learned how to lift C types into Felix. But what about C++ templates?

We'll show how to do parametrically polymorphic bindings in Felix using C++ vector as a simple example.

10.2 Polymorphic types

  type vector[T] = "::std::vector<?1>" 
    requires header '#include <vector>'
  ;

Well that was pretty easy! The {?1} notation here simply means the first type argument. Note that the parameter has the name T but the name isn't used.

10.2.1 Polymorphic functions

It doesn't take much imagination to guess now:

    fun len[T]: vector[T] -> size = "$1.size()";
    fun + [T] : vector[T] * vector[T] -> vector[T] = "$1+$2";
    fun get[T] : vector[T] * int -> T = "$1[$2]";

10.2.2 Polymorphic procedures.

We can now do some mutators but you should observe very closely!

    proc push_back[T]: &vector[T] * T = "$1->push_back($2);";
    proc make_vector[T] : &vector[T] = "*$1 = ::std::vector<?1>();";

To use this we're going to do some ugly stuff:

  var v: vector[int];
  make_vector (&v);
  push_back (&v, 1);
  push_back (&v, 2);
  println (get(v,1));

and we expect

Declaring an uninitialised variable then assigning to it is pretty ugly. We'll explain in detail how to work around this problem later. For now you should note that whilst the following code appears to work there are subtle problems with it:

    fun empty_vector[T] : 1 -> vector[T] = "::std::vector<?1>()";
    proc push[T] : vector[T] * T = "$1.push_back($2);";
    var y = empty_vector[int] ();
    push (y,1);
    push (y,2);
    println$ get (y, 1);

If you know C++ and you're beginning to grok Felix binding mechanism you will probably spot the problem: C++ push_back requires the vector argument to be an lvalue. So our example above works, but only because we use it where we happen to know that y will be an lvalue in the generated C++ code.

If we used an rvalue argument Felix would not complain, but the C++ compiler would. So we might write this code and even test it and assume everything was OK only to get unexpected errors later.

As a Felix library developer you're expected to construct C bindings that just work, all the time! The Felix type system has no notion of lvalue. We use pointers instead. Dereferencing a pointer always yields an lvalue.

At present the only way we know how to get a legitimate pointer is by addressing a variable, and this ensures that the vector value is stored in an object.

In Felix objects are mutable but values are not: to modify a value you must first ensure it is stored in an object, which makes it addressable and thus allows us to get a pointer to the object and modify it via that pointer.

All mutations in Felix have to go through pointers, however as we shall see later, they do not have to be Felix pointers. A C pointer wrapped in a binding will do provided some arcane magic is applied to Felix knows about it.