Encoding of (constructor * with * tuple)

Encoding of (constructor * with * tuple)

[rixed]

Hello list.

I'm using ocaml version 3.12.0+beta1, and reading the manual here :

http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/manual032.html#toc130

I have this datatype :

type color_specs = Array of vertex_array | Uniq of color

where :

type color = int * int * int * int
type vertex_array = (nativeint, Bigarray.nativeint_elt, Bigarray.c_layout) Bigarray.Array2.t

Values of type color_specs are passed to a C function.

>From the manual, I though that the value would be encoded in a block with a tag
of 0 (for Array) or 1 (Uniq). If Array, wosize would be 1 and the first and
only field would be a pointer to the bigarray, and if Uniq then the wosize
would be 4 and the four fields would be the unboxed integers.

But apparently I'm wrong since for the Uniq case the wosize is still 1 and the
first field points to the tupple of 4 ints which is allocated separately,
despite that the manual clearly says : "Non-constant constructors declared with
a n-tuple as argument are represented by a block of size n, tagged with the
constructor number; the n fields contain the components of its tuple argument." 

So who's wrong ? ocamlc ? the manual ? or just me :-) ?

Re: [Caml-list] Encoding of (constructor * with * tuple)

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:53:35 +0200,  wrote:
> 
> Hello list.
> 
> I'm using ocaml version 3.12.0+beta1, and reading the manual here :
> 
> http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/manual032.html#toc130
> 
> I have this datatype :
> 
> type color_specs = Array of vertex_array | Uniq of color
> 
> where :
> 
> type color = int * int * int * int
> type vertex_array = (nativeint, Bigarray.nativeint_elt, Bigarray.c_layout) Bigarray.Array2.t
> 
> Values of type color_specs are passed to a C function.
> 
>From the manual, I though that the value would be encoded in a block with a tag
> of 0 (for Array) or 1 (Uniq). If Array, wosize would be 1 and the first and
> only field would be a pointer to the bigarray, and if Uniq then the wosize
> would be 4 and the four fields would be the unboxed integers.
> 
> But apparently I'm wrong since for the Uniq case the wosize is still
> 1 and the first field points to the tupple of 4 ints which is
> allocated separately, despite that the manual clearly says :
> "Non-constant constructors declared with a n-tuple as argument are
> represented by a block of size n, tagged with the constructor
> number; the n fields contain the components of its tuple argument."

Your “Uniq” constructor is NOT declared with a 4-tuple but with a
single type “color”.  Hence the additional indirection.  To have the
expected behavior, you must declare

type color_specs = Array of vertex_array | Uniq of int * int * int * int

(NOT
type color_specs = Array of vertex_array | Uniq of (int * int * int * int) !)

The drawback is that you cannot extract the color as a single value
“Uniq color” since the constructor now expects 4 arguments.

Best,
C.