Re: [Chicken-users] binary data

[felix winkelmann]

On 9/11/06, john <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Is there an efficient way to retrieve some binary data from C into
> Chicken so that I could then read and write the data over a network
> using Chicken rather than using the FFI? The data I have allocated in
> C may contain nulls so I am not able to bring it over as a c-string. I
> have noticed the move-memory! command and wonder if this would do the
> trick if I moved the data to a byte-vector, or am I barking up the
> wrong tree and better off sticking with the FFI? Also, what is
> difference between primitive byte-vectors and SRFI-4 byte vectors?

You can do two things, depending on your needs:

- If you want the data to be garbage-collectable, you should allocate
 a byte-vector and move-memory! the data from a raw pointer
 that you pass to Scheme into the byte-vector.
- If you have control over the creation of the binary data, you can
 simply add a byte-vector header (1 word) at the front (that would
 be a C_word containing (C_BYTEVECTOR_TYPE | <size in bytes>).
 Passing the pointer to the word (which should be 8-byte aligned and be
 followed by the actual data) to scheme as a scheme-object lets
 you treat it like any other Scheme data, but it won't be GCd.

SRFI-4 byte-vectors are internally just structures containing a byte-vector
(and a structure tag).


cheers,
felix

--
http://galinha.ucpel.tche.br:8081/blog/blog.ssp