In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to implement some kind of thunking for it.

Is that mean that will be possible to use nonstatic class methods as winapi callbacks, window procedures, etc.?

How it's going, will it be anytime soon?

DYH.

<dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying
> function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to
> implement
> some kind of thunking for it.

Yes.

> Is that mean that will be possible to use nonstatic class methods as
> winapi
> callbacks, window procedures, etc.?

Yes.

> How it's going, will it be anytime soon?

It'll be a 2.0 thing.

Walter Bright wrote:
> <dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying
>> function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to implement
>> some kind of thunking for it.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Is that mean that will be possible to use nonstatic class methods as winapi
>> callbacks, window procedures, etc.?
> 
> Yes.
> 

Hmmm, that's the feature I've been missing for so long!

>> How it's going, will it be anytime soon?
> 
> It'll be a 2.0 thing. 
> 
> 

Can we name the next version 2.0, then? ;)

-JJR

In article <dp1tt1$13og$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>> Is that mean that will be possible to use nonstatic class methods as
>> winapi
>> callbacks, window procedures, etc.?
>
>Yes.

Thanks for reply, Walter. This is the ultimate feature that I miss in c++.

DYH.

Walter Bright wrote:
> <dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message
> news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>> In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about
>> unifying function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he
>> planning to implement some kind of thunking for it.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Is that mean that will be possible to use nonstatic class methods
>> as winapi callbacks, window procedures, etc.?
> 
> Yes.
<snip>

It would be interesting to see how this is going to work.  When you try to convert a delegate to a function pointer, will it wrap the delegate in an internal function, or what?

I can see there being more garbage collection issues to think about....

Stewart.

Walter Bright wrote:
> <dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>>In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying
>>function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to implement
>>some kind of thunking for it.
> 
> 
> Yes.
> 
Let me just see if I got this right (because I never quite understood this when I read the D spec):
Is this unification the ability the use delegates as function pointers and vice-versa?

Also, Walter said on another thread that this requires:
"... runtime thunk generation and some mucking about with the gc."
What issues to the GC does this bring? At first sight, it doesn't seem to me any different from the creation (and memory allocation) of the other anonymous entities we have already.

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> <dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message
>> news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> 
>>> In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to implement some kind of thunking for it.
>> 
>> Yes.
> 
> Let me just see if I got this right (because I never quite understood this when I read the D spec): Is this unification the ability the use delegates as function pointers and vice-versa?

Yes.

> Also, Walter said on another thread that this requires: "... runtime thunk generation and some mucking about with the gc." What issues to the GC does this bring? At first sight, it doesn't seem to me any different from the creation (and memory allocation) of the other anonymous entities we have already.

If I'm correctly guessing how it will work, then the function that will be generated will hold a pointer to an object that may be allocated on the heap.  As such, it will be necessary to make sure the GC follows this pointer.

Moreover, since the main purpose of converting delegates to function pointers is to communicate with foreign APIs, the problem of pointers into the GC heap held by foreign code crops up again.

http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?D/26273

Stewart.

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> <dyh@inbox.lv> wrote in message
>>> news:dp1qe0$11al$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>>
>>>> In some old D newsgroup archives (sep 2003) I saw questions about unifying function pointers and delegates. Walter mentioned that he planning to implement some kind of thunking for it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>
>>
>> Let me just see if I got this right (because I never quite understood this when I read the D spec): Is this unification the ability the use delegates as function pointers and vice-versa?
> 
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Also, Walter said on another thread that this requires: "... runtime thunk generation and some mucking about with the gc." What issues to the GC does this bring? At first sight, it doesn't seem to me any different from the creation (and memory allocation) of the other anonymous entities we have already.
> 
> 
> If I'm correctly guessing how it will work, then the function that will be generated will hold a pointer to an object that may be allocated on the heap.  As such, it will be necessary to make sure the GC follows this pointer.
> 
> Moreover, since the main purpose of converting delegates to function pointers is to communicate with foreign APIs, the problem of pointers into the GC heap held by foreign code crops up again.
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?D/26273
> 
> Stewart.

I just wish for function to delegate conversion.

I don't see the benefit of delegate to function conversion.
It's problematic at best, and delegates are superior unless you are accessing C code.

-DavidM