view admin/notes/iftc @ 80635:870dfda4d904

Regenerate.
author Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>
date Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:52:20 +0000
parents 695cf19ef79e
children 375f2633d815 ef719132ddfa
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Iso-Functional Type Contour


This is a term coined to describe "column int->float" change approach, and can
be used whenever low-level types need to change (hopefully not often!) but the
meanings of the values (whose type has changed) do not.

The premise is that changing a low-level type potentially means lots of code
needs to be changed as well, and the question is how to do this incrementally,
which is the preferred way to change things.

Say LOW and HIGH are C functions:

  int LOW (void) { return 1; }
  void HIGH (void) { int value = LOW (); }

We want to convert LOW to return float, so we cast HIGH usage:

  float LOW (void) { return 1.0; }
  void HIGH (void) { int value = (int) LOW (); }  /* iftc */

The comment /* iftc */ is used to mark this type of casting to differentiate
it from other casting.  We commit the changes and can now go about modifying
LOW and HIGH separately.  When HIGH is ready to handle the type change, the
cast can be removed.

;;; arch-tag: 3309cc41-5d59-421b-b7be-c94b04083bb5