base-4.8.2.0: Basic libraries

Copyright(C) 2014 I/O Tweag
Licensesee libraries/base/LICENSE
Maintainercvs-ghc@haskell.org
Stabilityinternal
Portabilitynon-portable (GHC Extensions)
Safe HaskellNone
LanguageHaskell2010

GHC.StaticPtr

Description

Symbolic references to values.

References to values are usually implemented with memory addresses, and this is practical when communicating values between the different pieces of a single process.

When values are communicated across different processes running in possibly different machines, though, addresses are no longer useful since each process may use different addresses to store a given value.

To solve such concern, the references provided by this module offer a key that can be used to locate the values on each process. Each process maintains a global table of references which can be looked up with a given key. This table is known as the Static Pointer Table. The reference can then be dereferenced to obtain the value.

Synopsis

Documentation

data StaticPtr a Source

A reference to a value of type a.

deRefStaticPtr :: StaticPtr a -> a Source

Dereferences a static pointer.

type StaticKey = Fingerprint Source

A key for StaticPtrs that can be serialized and used with unsafeLookupStaticPtr.

staticKey :: StaticPtr a -> StaticKey Source

The StaticKey that can be used to look up the given StaticPtr.

unsafeLookupStaticPtr :: StaticKey -> IO (Maybe (StaticPtr a)) Source

Looks up a StaticPtr by its StaticKey.

If the StaticPtr is not found returns Nothing.

This function is unsafe because the program behavior is undefined if the type of the returned StaticPtr does not match the expected one.

data StaticPtrInfo Source

Miscelaneous information available for debugging purposes.

Constructors

StaticPtrInfo 

Fields

staticPtrKeys :: IO [StaticKey] Source

A list of all known keys.