Re: [q-lang-users] Memory management in libqint

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

John Cowan wrote:
> Ah, excellent.  Please add this note to the next release of qint.h.

Done (in cvs).

> The only remaining point of doubt is whether the argv array itself
> (as opposed to its strings) in execv(x) belongs to Q.

No, they belong to the caller.

> Chicken is 8-bit by default, but has a UTF-8 egg that changes all
> internal strings to UTF-8.  I'm not sure how to handle this yet;
> I may simply say that the UTF-8 egg is a prerequisite for the Q egg.

Well, if you can check whether that UTF-8 "egg" is loaded (what a funny 
name for a module ;-) then you can omit the conversion if so.

> Bignums are also an issue:  Chicken has none by default but does have
> a "full numeric tower" egg that uses MPZ.  I have to figure out how
> to determine the proper representation of a Chicken number in order
> to pass it to Q properly.

In that case you should be able to check what kind of integer you have 
in Chicken? Then just pass it as an mpz_t if it already is one (don't 
forget to copy it since mpz_t objects become owned by Q when you pass 
them to qmkmpz). When decoding a Q integer, you should convert to the 
smallest type able to represent the number (i.e., first try qisuint [if 
there's a separate unsigned integer type in Chicken], then qisint and 
finally qismpz). If the number is only representable as a bignum but the 
bignum "egg" hasn't been loaded in Chicken, then you must either give up 
or convert it to something which fits into a machine integer (take the 
lowest limb or something).

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag