Re: Implementation of libpointer

[Reza Housseini]

Thanks John

I already made a public repository [1] but it's far from complete and I didn't found time working on that recently. I just thought using the octave_struct base class because of the similar interface which matlab uses with "mypointer.Value" but probably it's also possible to have the same behaviour without the octave_struct base class. There is this lib.pointer class [2] if you mean that when talking about handle class object?

[1] https://bitbucket.org/rezahousseini/octave-shared-lib-utilities

[2] http://www.mathworks.ch/ch/help/matlab/ref/lib.pointerclass.html

On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 3:40 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:

On 09/24/2013 05:57 AM, Reza Housseini wrote:

Hello

I try to implement the libpointer function [1]. It is used for example
in the calllib function [2]. Therefore a new type declaration is needed
and I was wondering where and how to implement them. Is it correct that
it need to be placed in libinterp/octave-value? And should it be some
derived struct class, with fixed size, like:

     class
     octave_pointer : public octave_struct
     {
       ...
     }

Or inherit directly from octave_map?

If you want to create a new value type in Octave, then it ultimately needs to be derived from octave_base_value.  So deriving from octave_struct could work.  It could also be derived directly from octave_base_value and contain an octave_scalar_map object (or can a libpointer object have non-scalar dimensions?)

But since it appears that the libpointer object only ever contains two fields, maybe it should just be a separate kind of object that doesn't use a structure for its implementation.

Is libpointer a handle class object in Matlab?  If so, you'll have some difficulty getting full compatibility

If you are working on calllib and would eventually like for it to be a part of Octave, maybe it would be helpful if you would share your code with us so we could provide some early feedback.

jwe