Re: FFI supports callbacks

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi!

"Jose A. Ortega Ruiz" <jao@gnu.org> writes:

> On Sun, Sep 05 2010, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
>> Hi there!
>>
>> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>>
>>> BTW, while we’re at it, how about make-foreign-function => pointer->procedure?
>>
>> We briefly discussed this on IRC.  One issue with the
>> ‘pointer->procedure’ name is that ‘->’ procedures are most of the time
>> one-argument procedures, whereas ‘make-foreign-function’ has 3 mandatory
>> arguments.
>>
>> However, it occurred to me that what confuses me most about
>> ‘make-foreign-function’ is that it actually makes a Scheme procedure out
>> of a foreign function.
>>
>> Conversely, ‘procedure->pointer’ really makes a foreign function out of
>> a Scheme procedure.
>>
>> In addition, I like the idea of having names that show the symmetry of
>> these two procedures.
>>
>> So, what do you think?  :-)
>>
>> (I’m also open to different names that aren’t confusing and show the
>> symmetry.)
>
> import-foreign-function
> export-foreign-function / export-to-foreign-function
>
> procedure-from-foreign-function / foreign-function-to-procedure
> procedure-to-foreign-function / foreign-function-from-procedure

OK.  (Slightly to verbose to my taste.)

> procedure-from-foreign / foreign-to-procedure
> procedure-to-foreign / foreign-from-procedure
>
> at any rate, i find "pointer" not clear enough.

Hmm but I find ‘foreign’ as a substantive hard to parse.  :-)

The object type in question is now called ‘pointer’ (it used to be
‘foreign’), hence the name.  “Pointer” is meant as a synonym for
‘void *’ ans pointer objects are untyped, which may be why it seems
“vague”.  But hey, the concept of pointing to the void *is* vague.
:-)

Thanks for the suggestions!

Ludo’.