6.19.6 Void Pointers and Byte Access

Wrapped pointers are untyped, so they are essentially equivalent to C void pointers. As in C, the memory region pointed to by a pointer can be accessed at the byte level. This is achieved using bytevectors (see Bytevectors). The (rnrs bytevectors) module contains procedures that can be used to convert byte sequences to Scheme objects such as strings, floating point numbers, or integers.

Load the (system foreign) module to use these Scheme interfaces.

(use-modules (system foreign))

Scheme Procedure: pointer->bytevector pointer len [offset [uvec_type]] ¶

C Function: scm_pointer_to_bytevector (pointer, len, offset, uvec_type) ¶

Return a bytevector aliasing the len bytes pointed to by pointer.

The user may specify an alternate default interpretation for the memory by passing the uvec_type argument, to indicate that the memory is an array of elements of that type. uvec_type should be something that array-type would return, like f32 or s16.

When offset is passed, it specifies the offset in bytes relative to pointer of the memory region aliased by the returned bytevector.

Mutating the returned bytevector mutates the memory pointed to by pointer, so buckle your seatbelts.

Scheme Procedure: bytevector->pointer bv [offset] ¶

C Function: scm_bytevector_to_pointer (bv, offset) ¶

Return a pointer aliasing the memory pointed to by bv or offset bytes after bv when offset is passed.

In addition to these primitives, convenience procedures are available:

Scheme Procedure: dereference-pointer pointer ¶

Assuming pointer points to a memory region that holds a pointer, return this pointer.

Scheme Procedure: string->pointer string [encoding] ¶

Return a foreign pointer to a nul-terminated copy of string in the given encoding, defaulting to the current locale encoding. The C string is freed when the returned foreign pointer becomes unreachable.

This is the Scheme equivalent of scm_to_stringn.

Scheme Procedure: pointer->string pointer [length] [encoding] ¶

Return the string representing the C string pointed to by pointer. If length is omitted or -1, the string is assumed to be nul-terminated. Otherwise length is the number of bytes in memory pointed to by pointer. The C string is assumed to be in the given encoding, defaulting to the current locale encoding.

This is the Scheme equivalent of scm_from_stringn.

Most object-oriented C libraries use pointers to specific data structures to identify objects. It is useful in such cases to reify the different pointer types as disjoint Scheme types. The define-wrapped-pointer-type macro simplifies this.

Scheme Syntax: define-wrapped-pointer-type type-name pred wrap unwrap print ¶

Define helper procedures to wrap pointer objects into Scheme objects with a disjoint type. Specifically, this macro defines:

• pred, a predicate for the new Scheme type;
• wrap, a procedure that takes a pointer object and returns an object that satisfies pred;
• unwrap, which does the reverse.

wrap preserves pointer identity, for two pointer objects p1 and p2 that are equal?, (eq? (wrap p1) (wrap p2)) ⇒ #t.

Finally, print should name a user-defined procedure to print such objects. The procedure is passed the wrapped object and a port to write to.

For example, assume we are wrapping a C library that defines a type, bottle_t, and functions that can be passed bottle_t * pointers to manipulate them. We could write:

(define-wrapped-pointer-type bottle
  bottle?
  wrap-bottle unwrap-bottle
  (lambda (b p)
    (format p "#<bottle of ~a ~x>"
            (bottle-contents b)
            (pointer-address (unwrap-bottle b)))))

(define grab-bottle
  ;; Wrapper for `bottle_t *grab (void)'.
  (let ((grab (foreign-library-function libbottle "grab_bottle"
                                        #:return-type '*)))
    (lambda ()
      "Return a new bottle."
      (wrap-bottle (grab)))))

(define bottle-contents
  ;; Wrapper for `const char *bottle_contents (bottle_t *)'.
  (let ((contents (foreign-library-function libbottle "bottle_contents"
                                            #:return-type '*
                                            #:arg-types  '(*))))
    (lambda (b)
      "Return the contents of B."
      (pointer->string (contents (unwrap-bottle b))))))

(write (grab-bottle))
⇒ #<bottle of Château Haut-Brion 803d36>

In this example, grab-bottle is guaranteed to return a genuine bottle object satisfying bottle?. Likewise, bottle-contents errors out when its argument is not a genuine bottle object.

As another example, currently Guile has a variable, scm_numptob, as part of its API. It is declared as a C long. So, to read its value, we can do:

(use-modules (system foreign))
(use-modules (rnrs bytevectors))
(define numptob
  (foreign-library-pointer #f "scm_numptob"))
numptob
(bytevector-uint-ref (pointer->bytevector numptob (sizeof long))
                     0 (native-endianness)
                     (sizeof long))
⇒ 8

If we wanted to corrupt Guile’s internal state, we could set scm_numptob to another value; but we shouldn’t, because that variable is not meant to be set. Indeed this point applies more widely: the C API is a dangerous place to be. Not only might setting a value crash your program, simply accessing the data pointed to by a dangling pointer or similar can prove equally disastrous.