Re: IDL issue - struct return vs. cap return

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Tue, 2007-07-10 at 17:24 +0200, Neal H. Walfield wrote:
> > At Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:03:10 -0400, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> > > If we choose to adopt the "return the return value" convention, it is
> > > still necessary to handle capability returns specially in C, because the
> > > caller must say where the incoming capability is to be stored (we cannot
> > > get compiler help for this from an unmodified compiler).
> > 
> > How is this different from returning a struct?  There is a general
> > rule of thumb not to return large structs from function calls.
> > Instead, the convention is for either the function allocates memory or
> > the caller to pass a pointer to a block of allocated memory.
> 
> You appear to me to have implied that return by value is somehow
> normal and that return by reference is not.  My observation was that
> structs are often returned by reference, not by value.

You are mistaken.

It is certainly true that *users* often write procedures in such a way
that structures are returned by reference. However, from the compiler
perspective the declared return type in this case is always "struct *",
which is a *scalar* that is returned *by value*.

All parameter and return value passing in C is by value. It is possible
for users to construct by-reference conventions on top of this, but the
compiler has no knowledge of this.

> I claimed that
> if you want to generally return structs by value, then there are
> scenarios where you also need to modify the compiler--just like when
> returning capabilities by value.

Well, you're going to have to give an example on the struct thing,
because from the C compiler perspective structs are passed and returned
by value, and have been for almost 30 years now.

I'll respond on the capability thing separately, since I think the
issues are diverged.

shap