Struct Notation

[MattyD]

Hi all,

I'll happily be shot down on this, but would it be worth bringing dot notation for structs back into the fold officially?
TBH I'm not particularly married to dot notation specifically - but if its there, working, and all over the forum it might be worth revisiting.

I mean there's probably little incentive to do this the correct way:

SomeFunc($hSomeHandle, _
    DllStructGetData($tRect, "Left"), _
    DllStructGetData($tRect, "Top"), _
    DllStructGetData($tRect, "Right"), _
    DllStructGetData($tRect, "Bottom"))

When this works perfectly fine:

SomeFunc($hSomeHandle, $tRect.Left, $tRect.Top, $tRect.Right, $tRect.Bottom)

Also (more of a pain point for me), it would be amazing to have a shorthand for DllStructGetPtr and DllStructGetSize.  So maybe something like $tStruct.ptr if we're to continue on a theme? I feel I'm forever declaring one-off $pStruct and $iStructLen variables purely for legibility.

So e.g. this

;Create Buffer
$tBuffer = DllStructCreate(StringFormat("byte[%d]", $iSize))

;create struct for a DllCall which references the buffer
$tMidiHdr = DllStructCreate($tag_midihdr)
$pMidiHdr = DllStructGetPtr($tMidiHdr) ;need to pass this to DllCall later!

;Set members
DllStructSetData($tMidiHdr, "lpData", DllStructGetPtr($tBuffer))
DllStructSetData($tMidiHdr, "dwBufferLength", DllStructGetSize($tBuffer))

could be expressed as:

$tBuffer = DllStructCreate(StringFormat("byte[%d]", $iSize))
$tMidiHdr = DllStructCreate($tag_midihdr)

$tMidiHdr.lpData = $tBuffer.ptr
$tMidiHdr.dwBufferLength = $tBuffer.size

Just improves legibility, and is like 100x faster to code when you're doing a lot of it.

Anyway, thats my thoughts FWIW. Probably just getting more irritable as I get older!

[Nine]

I am using a lot of the dot notation on structures.  It is a bit slower than its function counterpart, but if it not use within a large loop, the difference is insignificant.

I do not agree with your suggestion of .ptr and .size cause it will interfere with some structure declaration like this one (making it script breaking) :

Local $tStruct = DllStructCreate("int size;long_ptr ptr")

However I do think the priority should be to fix the following bug :

Local $tStruct = DllStructCreate("byte data[10]")
Local $i = 5
$tStruct.data(5) = 1 ; working
ConsoleWrite($tStruct.data(5) & @CRLF)
$tStruct.data($i) = 2 ; not working == dangerous bug
ConsoleWrite($tStruct.data(5) & @CRLF)
$tStruct.data(($i)) = 3 ; working
ConsoleWrite($tStruct.data(5) & @CRLF)

 

[MattyD]

3 hours ago, Nine said:

I do not agree with your suggestion of .ptr and .size cause it will interfere...

sure, I'm not dying on this hill - but a shorthand any form was more what I was driving at.

yep, agree that the array bug would be the first thing to fix.
It's technically not a feature though hey? - I'd imagine a decision would first need to be made to pursue this at some level.

Edited July 20 by MattyD

[jpm]

Hi,

already fix for next beta/release