# Copyright (C) 2001-2004, The Perl Foundation.
# $Id: vtables.pod 16904 2007-02-06 05:39:03Z allison $

=head1 NAME

docs/vtables.pod - Parrot Vtables

=head1 Implementing Variable Types with Vtables

This is a guide to creating your own PMC (Parrot Magic Cookie) classes.  It
tells you what you need to write in order to add new variable types to Parrot.

=head2 Overview

The guts of the Parrot interpreter are by design ignorant (or, if you want to
be less disparaging, agnostic) of the intricacies of variable type behavior.
The standard example is the difference between Perl scalars and Python scalars.
In Perl, if you have

    $a = "a9";
    $a++;

you end up with C<$a> being C<b0>. This is because of the magic of the Perl
increment operator. In Python, on the other hand, you'd get a runtime error.

=over 3

=item *

To be perfectly honest, this is a slightly flawed example, since it's unlikely
that there will be a distinct "Python scalar" PMC class.  The Python compiler
could well type-inference variables such that C<a> would be a C<PythonString>
and C<b> would be a C<PythonNumber>.  But the point remains - incrementing a
C<PythonString> is very different from incrementing a C<PerlScalar>.

=back

Since the behavior is a function of the "type" of the PMC, it's natural to
consider the various different types of PMC as classes in an object-oriented
system. The Parrot interpreter calls methods on the individual PMC objects to
manipulate them. So the example above would translate to something like:

=over 3

=item 1.

Construct a new PMC in the PerlScalar class.

=item 2.

Call a method setting its string value to C<"a9">.

=item 3.

Call a method to tell it to increment itself.

=back

And if you replace PerlScalar with PythonString, you get different behavior but
to the fundamental guts of the interpreter, the instructions are the same. PMCs
are an abstract virtual class; the interpreter calls a method, the PMC object
does the right thing, and the interpreter shouldn't have to care particularly
what that right thing happens to be.

Hence, adding a new data type to Parrot is a question of providing methods
which implement that data type's expected behavior. Let's now look at how one
is supposed to do this.

=head2 Starting out

If you're adding data types to the core of Parrot, (and you've checked with
Chip that you're supposed to be doing so) you should be creating a file in the
F<src/pmc/> subdirectory; this is where all the built-in PMC classes live. (And
a good source of examples to plunder even if you're not writing a core data
type.)

You should almost always start by running F<tools/dev/gen_class.pl> to
generate a skeleton for the class. Let's generate a number type for
the beautifully non-existent Fooby language:

    % perl tools/dev/gen_class.pl FoobyNumber > src/pmc/foobynumber.pmc

This will produce a skeleton C file (to be preprocessed by the
F<tools/build/pmc2c.pl> program) with stubs for all the methods you need to
fill in. The function C<init> allows you to set up anything you need to set up.
Comment out the C<namespace> method from the automatically generated set
of methods (otherwise, the compile will fail).

Now you'll have to do something a little different depending on whether you're
writing a built-in class or an extension class. If you're writing a built-in
class, then you'll see a reference to C<enum_class_FoobyNumber> in the C<init>
function. For built-in classes, this is automatically defined in F<pmc.h> when
you run F<Configure.pl>.  If you're not writing a built-in class, you need to
indicate this by using the 'extension' keyword after the 'pmclass YOURCLASS'
declaration in F<src/pmc/YOURCLASS.pmc>. Then, change the type of the C<init>
function to return C<struct _vtable>, and then return C<temp_base_vtable>
instead of assigning to the interpreter specific C<vtables> array.

To finish up adding a built-in class:

=over 4

=item 1.

Add src/pmc/YOURCLASS.pmc to the MANIFEST

=item 2.

Run C<make realclean>, and rerun F<Configure.pl> to add your new PMC to
the set of built-in PMCs.

=back

=head2 What You Can and Cannot Do

The usual way to continue from the F<tools/dev/gen_class.pl>-generated
skeleton is to define a structure that will hook onto the C<data>, if your
data type needs to use that, and then also define some user-defined flags.

Flags are accessed by C<< pmc->flags >>. Most of the bits in the flag word are
reserved for use by parrot itself, but a number of them have been assigned for
general use by individual classes. These are referred to as
C<Pobj_private0_FLAG> .. C<Pobj_private7_FLAG>. (The '7' may change during the
early development of parrot, but will become pretty fixed at some point.)

Normally, you will want to alias these generic bit names to something more
meaningful within your class:

    enum {
        Foobynumber_is_bignum = Pobj_private0_FLAG,
        Foobynumber_is_bigint = Pobj_private1_FLAG,
        ....
    };

You're quite at liberty to declare these in a separate header file, but I find
it more convenient to keep everything together in F<foobynumber.c>.  To
manipulate the flags, use the macros listed in F<pobj.h>.

You may also use the C<cache> union in the PMC structure to remove some
extraneous dereferences in your code if that would help.

=head2 Multimethods

One slightly (potentially) tricky element of implementing vtables is that
several of the vtable functions have variant forms depending on the type of
data that they're being called with.

For instance, the C<set_integer> method has multiple forms; the default
C<set_integer> means that you are being called with a PMC, and you should
probably use the C<get_integer> method of the PMC to find its integer value;
C<set_integer_native> means you're being passed an C<INTVAL>. The final form is
slightly special; if the interpreter calls C<set_integer_same>, you know that
the PMC that you are being passed is of the same type as you. Hence, you can
break the class abstraction to save a couple of dereferences - if you want to.

Similar shortcuts exist for strings, (C<native> and C<same>) and floating point
numbers.

=head2 Implementing methods

The master list of vtable methods can be found in F<vtable.tbl> in the root
directory of the Parrot source, with documentation in
F<docs/pdds/pdd02_vtables.pod>. A few of these are very important, for
instance:

=over 3

=item C<type>

Return the enumeration value of your class.

=item C<name>

Return a string containing your class name.

=item C<init>

Initialization.  Parrot makes exactly one call to either C<init> or
C<init_pmc> at PMC construction time.

=item C<init_pmc>

Alternative entry point for initialization that takes a PMC argument.
Parrot makes exactly one call to either C<init> or C<init_pmc> at PMC
construction time.

NOTE: It is strongly suggested that C<init_pmc(PMCNULL)> be equivalent to
C<init()>.

=item C<is_equal>

True if the passed-in PMC has the same B<value> as you. For instance, a Perl
integer and a Python integer could have the same value, but could not be the
same thing as defined by C<is_same>.

=item C<clone>

Copy your data and state into the passed-in destination PMC.

=back

Others are methods you may or may not need, depending on your type:

=over 3

=item C<morph>

Turn yourself into the specified type.

=item C<destroy>

Do any data shut-down and finalization you need to do. To have this method
called, you must set the C<Pobj_active_destroy_FLAG>.

=item C<get_integer>

Return an integer representation of yourself.

=item C<get_number>

Return a floating-point representation of yourself.

=item C<get_string>

Return a string representation of yourself (a STRING* object), this should be a
B<copy> of whatever string you are holding, not just a pointer to your own
string so that anything that calls this method can happily modify this value
without making a mess of your guts.

=item C<get_bool>

Return a boolean representation of yourself.

=item C<get_value>

Return your private data as a raw pointer.

=item C<is_same>

True if the passed-in PMC refers to exactly the same B<data> as you. (Contrast
C<is_equal>)

=item C<set_integer>

Set yourself to the passed-in integer value. This is an integer multimethod.

=item C<set_number>

Set yourself to the passed-in float value. This is a floating-point
multimethod.

=item C<set_string>

Set yourself to the passed-in string. This is a string multimethod.

=item C<set_value>

Set your private data to the raw pointer passed in. This will only be used in
exceptional circumstances.

=item C<add>

Fetch the number part of C<value> and add your numeric value to it, storing the
result in C<dest>. (Probably by calling its C<set_integer> or C<set_number>
method) This is a numeric multimethod.

=item C<subtract>

Fetch the number part of C<value> and subtract your numeric value from it,
storing the result in C<dest>. (Probably by calling its C<set_integer> or
C<set_number> method) This is a numeric multimethod.

=item C<multiply>

=item C<divide>

=item C<modulus>

You get the picture.

=item C<concatenate>

Fetch the string part of C<value> and concatenate it to yourself, storing the
result in C<dest>. (Probably by calling its C<set_string> method) This is a
string multimethod.

=item C<logical_or>

=item C<logical_and>

Perform the given short-circuiting logical operations between your boolean
value and the value passed in, storing the result in C<dest>.

=item C<logical_not>

Set yourself to be a logical negation of the value passed in.

=item C<repeat>

Repeat your string representation C<value> times and store the result in
C<dest>.

=back

If any method doesn't fit into your class, just don't implement it and don't
provide an empty function body. The default class, which all classes inherit
from, will throw an exception, if this method would be called.

If your class is a modification of an existing class, you may wish to use
inheritance. At the beginning of your vtable specification in
src/pmc/YOURCLASS.pmc, add the C<extends SUPERCLASS> phrase. For example:

  pmclass PackedArray extends Array { ...

See the POD documentation in F<tools/build/pmc2c.pl> for a list of useful
keywords that you may use in the .pmc file. (Run C<perldoc -F pmc2c.pl> to view
the POD.)

