Re: struct interface

[Dirk Herrmann <dirk at ida dot ing dot tu-bs dot de>]

On 6 Apr 2000, Mikael Djurfeldt wrote:

> I don't want to introduce complexity in the user interface.  One
> should be able to write things like:
> 
> struct foo {
>   char c;
>   SCM s;
> }
> 
> and rely on that this will work whatever architecture you're running
> on.
> 
> If we require users to do explicit padding, I think this will become a
> common source of bugs.

Except if we add a debug mode in which at runtime the alignments are
checked with every call to the SCM_MEMORY_WORD macro.

However, my temporary concern is not how to care for extensions to guile
which are in a maybe-not-too-near future.  The question is, whether the
suggested macros make sense and whether we should try to direct the
majority of guile's current memory accesses through such a set of
macros.  Is this, for example, something helpful for the introduction of
the new garbage collection mechanisms?

Best regards
Dirk Herrmann