Re: Gurus? Care to re-explain the absense of gh_set_x() for me?

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Sam" == Sam Tregar <address@hidden> writes:

    Sam> On 13 Jul 2001, Alex Shinn wrote:
    >> Hmmm... not sure what the implications of directly changing the
    >> SCM struct contents would be, and whether this might break
    >> things in Guile.

    Sam> This is roughly what I was expecting the non-existent
    Sam> gh_set_x() to do - change the value stored in an SCM without
    Sam> otherwise disturbing its identity.

For a SCM that directly holds an integer value, this is fundamentally
impossible in Guile.  For small integers, the SCM value *is* the
integer value, give or take some flag bits to indicate that we're
talking about small integers.

In other words, if the SCM value for the number 3 is 0x11000003, the
SCM value for the number 13 is 0x1100000d.  So you can't "change the
value stored in a SCM without otherwise disturbing its identity".

What you _can_ do is the single-element vector trick.  You set your
SCM to a single-element vector -- see gh_make_vector -- and then
access and mutate the value stored in that vector's element using
gh_vector_ref and gh_vector_set_x.  (Or you could use a pair, and
access/mutate using gh_car/gh_set_car_x.)

FWIW, the identical trick is often used in Java: where you need to
store a mutable integer as an Object, you do it by creating an int[1].

        Neil