User:Schuetzm/scope2

Introduction

The current D language specification reserves the scope keyword in function signatures to specify that a parameter will not be escaped by the function, making it @safe to pass references to local variables or manually managed memory to it, among other things. This feature is currently unimplemented, apart from its use with lambdas where it guarantees the closure will be allocated on the stack instead of the GC. This proposal intends to change that. It will allow the safe and efficient implementation of various memory management strategies (including reference counting), as well as unified handling of references to GC, reference counted data, local variables, containers, and others.

The proposal is mostly a superset of DIP25, but is generalized to all types of references and adds inference to alleviate the need for explicit annotations. Credits are due to the authors of that DIP, Andrei and Walter, then to Zach the Mystic who had the idea to generalize DIP25 as well as provided inspiration for the inference algorithm, deadalnix for his many valuable arguments, for example pointing out the intricacies of handling multiple indirections safely, and various other members of the community who provided useful contributions in past discussions in the news groups.

Overview

Basics

scope is a storage class; it will only be applicable to parameters in function signatures (which include the implicit this parameter for methods, as well as the context pointer for delegates). It will have the semantics one expects: when a function with a scope parameter returns, the corresponding argument will not have been stored in a global variable or on the heap, etc:

void sendData(scope ubyte[] data);
void someOtherFunction(ubyte[] data);

void main() {
    ubyte[1024] chunkOfData = ...;
    sendData(chunkOfData);
    // this is @safe: no reference to the local has escaped
    someOtherFunction(chunkOfData);
    // this is @system: the callee gives no guarantees about the param
}

As we can see, certain operations, like taking the address of a local (or slicing of a fixed-size array, which is equivalent), no longer need to be @system per se. Instead, it's what is done with the resulting reference that decides whether it's @system or @safe.

Implicit scope and opt-out

To reduce the need for manual annotations, @safe functions take all their reference parameters as scope. ref implies scope even in @system functions. Because sometimes a @safe function may actually want to accept non-scope params, there is an opt-out in the form of static. Coupled with scope inference for templates, and an optional change like "@safe by default" (currently being discussed), this will get rid of most explicit scope annotations:

void doSomething(int[] data) @safe;
// equivalent to:
void doSomething(scope int[] data) @safe;

void foo(int[] input, static int* output) @safe;
// `input` is scope, `output` isn't

void bar(ref MyStruct s) @safe;
// equivalent to:
void bar(scope ref MyStruct s) @safe;

scope for value types & overloading

scope applies to all types with indirections: pointers, slices, class references, ref parameters, delegates, and aggregates containing such. Functions can be overloaded on scope. This allows efficient passing of RC wrappers for instance:

struct RC(T) if(is(T == class)) {
    // ...
    this(this) {
        // increment refcount
        count++;
    }
    ~this() {
        // decrement refcount
        if(--count == 0)
            destroy(payload);
    }
    this(this) scope {
        // DON'T increment refcount
    }
    ~this() scope {
        // DON'T decrement refcount
    }
    // magic, to be explained later
    alias borrow this;
}

void foo(scope MyClass object);

RC!MyClass global;
void bar(scope RC!MyClass object) {
    if(some_condition)
        global = object; // make a copy, adjust refcount
}

void main() {
    RC!MyClass x = ...;
    // auto conversion to MyClass, no refcount update:
    foo(x);
    // no refcount update at call site,
    // no needless double indirection with `ref`:
    bar(x);
}

All of this can be implemented in user code or in the standard library. The compiler doesn't need to be aware of reference counting.

The rules for overloading are:

• If only an overload accepting scope is defined, it is selected.
• If only an overload accepting static (the default) is defined, it can only be called if the argument also has static scope.
• If both overloads are defined, the static one is called for arguments with static scope, and the scope one for all others.

Implicit conversions

A scope parameter doesn't care how the data it refers to has been allocated. All it requires is that the reference stays valid for the duration of the function call. Therefore, it's a perfect fit for library functions. They don't need to be templated to support different resource management strategies of the library's user. It acts as a bridge between different types of strategies, just like const acts as a bridge between mutable and immutable data.

// no template bloat, no knowledge about RC etc.:
double computeAverage(scope int[] data);

void main() {
    int[20] local = [1,2,3,...];
    writeln(computeAverage(local));    // OK
    int[] heap = ...;
    writeln(computeAverage(heap));     // OK
    RC!(int[]) rc = ...;
    writeln(computeAverage(rc));       // OK
}

This is achieved by allowing non-scoped types to convert to scope implicitly. For builtin references, the language does this automatically. User-defined types must opt in by defining an appropriate alias this.

Returning scoped parameters

Some functions want to return a parameter that is passed in, or something reachable through one, e.g. a member of this. They can express this by annotating the parameter with the keyword return, just as in DIP25:

struct RC(T) if(is(T == class)) {
    scope T payload;
    T borrow() return {    // `return` applies to `this`
        return payload;
    }
}

To specify that the value is returned through another parameter, the return!ident syntax can be used. If necessary, these annotations can be used multiple times per parameter, when the reference can be returned through several other parameters:

int* foo(
    scope int* input return return!output return!output2,
    int** output,
    out int* output2
);

To prevent accidental non-scoped access to a member (e.g. payload in the above example), the member can be annotated with scope. The compiler will then treat it as if it were always accessed through an appropriately annotated property that returns a (scoped) reference to it.

The compiler will make sure the returned value is not used in any way that is un-@safe. In particular, it will verify that the returned references' lifetimes won't exceed the lifetimes of the arguments they're coming from.

scope inference

For templates and nested functions, the compiler can infer the scope annotations, just as it infers purity and @safe-ty. Generic code therefore rarely needs any explicit annotations:

T* foo(T)(T* a, T* b) {
    static T* cache;
    cache = b;
    return a;
}

// `foo!int` will be inferred as:
int* foo_int(scope int* a return, static int* b);
// (`static` is the default anyway, only here for clarity)

Multiple indirections

Multiple indirections are also handled in a way that preserves the guarantees about lifetimes. Because scope is not a type modifier, it cannot encode information about the lifetimes of objects behind more than one indirection. Therefore, the compiler must be conservative. For the left-hand side of assignments, it must assume that the destination has infinite lifetime, while for the right-hand side, it must assume that the destination will vanish as soon as the reference through which it is accessed goes out of scope.

@safe-ty violations with borrowing

When borrowing is combined with explicit, non lexical-scope based memory management (of which reference counting is one form), there will inevitably be problems as the one discussed in this forum thread. To deal with them in a safe way requires some kind of data flow and aliasing analysis. Rust is an example of a language that uses very sophisticated analysis algorithms for that. This proposal will include a simplified algorithm to detect potentially unsafe uses at compile time, at the cost of detecting some false positives, for which there will however be workarounds. Instead of disallowing these operations, they will be treated as @system. It is therefore up to the end user to decide how to deal with them.