www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D.bugs - [Issue 13093] New: D ABI change for guaranteed efficient return of

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13093

          Issue ID: 13093
           Summary: D ABI change for guaranteed efficient return of fixed
                    size array
           Product: D
           Version: D2
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P1
         Component: DMD
          Assignee: nobody puremagic.com
          Reporter: bearophile_hugs eml.cc

I suggest to change the D ABI to make code like this avoid an array copy in
100% of the cases (without inlining, and regardless the optimization levels,
and in all D compilers):


ubyte[10000] foo() nothrow  safe {
    typeof(return) data;
    // Some code here.
    return data;
}
void main() nothrow {
    immutable data = foo();
}


That means that code is equivalent to (note the need for the explicit cast):

void foo(ref ubyte[10000] __data) nothrow  safe {
    __data[] = 0;
    // Some code here.
}
void main() nothrow {
    ubyte[10000] __data = void;
    foo(__data);
    immutable data = cast(immutable ubyte[10000])__data;
}


If the returned fixed-size array is very small (like one or two CPU words, or
perhaps even three), the new ABI can specify it's returned by value in
registers.

In my  nogc code I'd like to use fixed-size arrays, so it's nice to be sure
they are _always_ returned efficiently, and at the same time keep a nice syntax
that allows me to tag the result as immutable (and more DRY code that avoids to
repeat ubyte[10000] more than once as it happens in the second program).


Dmitry Olshansky has commented:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/xvtnfpsqlzxptjjfhibq forum.dlang.org


 IMO this is a good idea and it pretty much NRVO/RVO for structs extended 
 to fixed-size arrays (which more or less a special kind of struct). 
 Since C/C++ do not have fixed-size arrays passed by value I see no 
 damage to ABI compatibility.


--
Jul 11 2014