Re: User-defined record types

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

SM> You lost me: I though "null" and "empty list" were JSON thingies, so
SM> I just offered you ways to represent them on the Elisp side.  Of course,
SM> when turning those elements into JSON, you'd be careful to map them to
SM> the appropriate JSON elements.
> Right.  So instead of a special mapping operation, the underlying C
> storage (record) should hold the JSON/YAML/XML types and values
> directly.

Huh... no, I'm thinking about json.el, with no C code involved at all.

SM> I still don't understand in what way a custom data structure would help.
> By holding the original data in a way that today's Emacs internals can't.

For example?

> - the value under the "y" key has four distinct values that should be
>   represented and serialized differently, yet provide the expected
>   semantics for ELisp access ("null", "[]", and "false" would be exposed
>   as `nil').

Let's call [[e]] the Elisp representation of JSON's e.
Then you're saying that [[null]] would be exposed as nil and
[[false]] as well?  Then would it be the case that (eq [[false]] [[null]])?

I really don't see how you expect to turn those into `nil', preserve
sane semantics (and Elisp performance), and be able to recover null, [],
and false when converting them back to JSON.  You can probably pick any
two of the three, but all three together sounds pretty much impossible.

> - stored efficiently

Saying so is not sufficient to make it so.

> format.  The C implementation would also be more efficient than an ELisp
> implementation if it serializes to and from JSON in C, but that's a
> minor concern.

We're back at the FFI discussion, which is a different issue.

> Finally, a C implementation would be able to make null, false, and []
> look like `nil' in boolean or iteration contexts, yet preserve the
> original data.

C is not magic.  Such a "feature" would require changes deep in the
elisp/bytecode interpreter, the NILP function/macro, ...


        Stefan