DEF AREA(S@ AS RECT) = S@.W# * S@.H#
DEF POKEIT(P@ AS PTR TO RECT)
A parameter names its type, exactly as DIM does. A bare `DEF F(S@)` is refused:
@ says "a structure" without saying which, so it does not state a contract the
way S$ does, and accepting it would mean checking fields at the call rather than
at the declaration -- which is the hole naming the type closes. The cost is that
there are no generic functions, and that is a real loss rather than an oversight.
Passing is by value, because a parameter is bound by assignment and assignment
copies; a pointer parameter copies its reference and lets a function change its
caller's record on purpose. Neither is a special rule. What a structure
parameter does need is its storage prepared before the copy, since a structure
variable is a run of slots and there is nothing to copy into until the run
exists.
A DEF parameter list is no longer parsed as an argument list, because a
parameter is a declaration rather than an expression: `S@ AS RECT` stopped that
parser dead with "Unbalanced parenthesis".
akbasic_value_is_truthy() learned that a pointer is true when it points at
something, which had to come with this. Without it there is no way to test for
the end of a list at all -- comparing a pointer to 0 reads a numeric field it
does not carry and answers whatever that field held. A structure is deliberately
given no truth value: it always exists, so the question has no answer worth
guessing at.
And a regression I introduced last commit, plus the older one underneath it.
prev_environment() released a scope but not the variables the scope created, so
a call leaked one slot per parameter and two hundred calls exhausted the
128-slot pool. Giving each DEF call its own scope made that reachable; it was
there for GOSUB all along, measured on a stashed build -- a subroutine with a
local of its own failed after about 128 calls before any of this work. The
release is safe because a scope's table holds only what it created, and it is
the variable slot that comes back rather than its storage, so a pointer into a
record DIMmed in that scope stays sound.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A pointer is a distinct declared kind rather than a mode a structure can be in,
which is what "strict" means here: `.` requires a structure on its left and `->`
requires a pointer, neither stands in for the other, and both refusals name the
operator the program should have used. So a reader always knows from the
spelling whether the thing on the left is their own copy or somebody else's
data.
Assignment still copies. POINT is the only way to share, so a program that never
writes it can never be surprised by aliasing -- and `P@ = A@` is refused with a
message saying to POINT it instead, rather than quietly becoming the one
assignment in the language that does not copy.
PTR TO is also the only way a TYPE may refer to itself, since by value it would
have no finite size. That is what makes a linked list possible, and
tests/language/structures/pointers.bas builds one, walks it and renders it.
Rendering follows pointers, so it needs a depth bound where copying does not:
copy stops at a pointer by construction, but two nodes pointing at each other is
easy to write and PRINT would not come back. Four levels, chosen so the bound
bites before the 256-byte render buffer does -- otherwise a cycle would stop
because it ran out of room rather than because it was told to.
Three things the work turned up, all now pinned by tests:
A freshly DIMmed record printed `(UNDEFINED STRING REPRESENTATION FOR 0)` for
every field. Slots now take the type their field declared, so it reads as zeros.
Adding POINT as a verb makes POINT unusable as a type name, and the parser
reported that as "Expected expression or literal" pointing at the line rather
than the problem. The prescan now refuses a reserved word as a type name and
says so.
Field names follow the same reserved-word rule as variable names, enforced by
the loader's own scan -- `TO@` is a bad field name for exactly the reason `TO#`
is a bad variable name. Recorded rather than worked around.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
BASIC 7.0 has no records at all, so none of this is a port. The `@` suffix was
not invented either: the Go reference reserved IDENTIFIER_STRUCT and never used
it, and src/grammar.c rendered such a leaf as "NOT IMPLEMENTED" until now.
Declaring the type is what buys the storage model. A TYPE states its fields, so
an instance has a known slot count and is laid out exactly as an array is -- one
contiguous run from the same value pool DIM already draws from, with field access
as offset arithmetic. No new pool holds data; the only new table holds
descriptors. A nested value flattens into its container's run, which is why
LINE with two POINTs and a string is five slots rather than three.
Each field takes its type from its own suffix, the same rule every other name
here follows, so a field list needs no type column. An `@` field is the
exception and has to name its type, because three primitive types fit in three
suffix characters and N declared types do not fit in one.
The declaration is prescanned before the program runs, like labels and DATA and
for the same reason: it has to be in effect wherever control goes. Three passes,
each for a case the one before cannot do -- names first so a field can refer to
a type declared later, then field lists, then sizes by repeated resolution. What
never resolves is a cycle of by-value containment, so "a TYPE cannot contain
itself by value" is a diagnosis rather than an assumption, and the message says
to use PTR TO instead.
Assignment copies. That interception is the whole feature and it cannot live in
akbasic_value_clone(), which copies one slot -- and one slot holds a *reference*
to an instance rather than the instance, so going through it would alias. A
structure is intercepted before that path and its slots are copied one at a
time, walking the descriptor rather than memcpy-ing the run, because a pointer
field must copy its reference where a value field must copy its slots.
Two smaller things the work required. All three prescans now sit inside one
ATTEMPT: a malformed declaration is the program's mistake, and it was printing a
stack trace and taking the driver with it, which is the boundary goal 3 exists
to draw. And a fresh variable's structtype is -1 rather than the 0 a memset
leaves, because 0 is a valid type index and every new variable was claiming to
be the first type declared.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
