Sep.26.2018 -- CAlive to introduce adhocstruct extensions

[Rick C. Hodgin]

CAlive will introduce the ability to create a definition for accessing dynamically created structures at runtime.  This will simplify the coding required to access complex and coordinated flexible data where the details of a struct implementation are known only at runtime, being derived by observed real-word values in real data.  This syntax will hide the mechanics of that ad hoc data access / traversal.

    // Create the same structure with the flexible portion

    flexstruct SCdxNode

    {

        u16     type;

        u16     keyCount;

        u32     nodeLeft;

        u32     nodeRight;

        u32     mask_RN;

        u8      mask_TC;

        u8      mask_DC;

        u8      bits_RN;

        u8      bits_TC;

        u8      bits_DC;

        // Total:  21 bytes

        // Add the flex space which extends up to 512 bytes

        flex    keyspace#512;

    };

    function example

    | params SCdxNode* node

    | returns u32 count

    {

        // Create an ad hoc struct to access the bits within this header portion

        adhocstruct SKeyMeta

        {

            u32     RN : node->bits_RN;

            u32     TC : node->bits_TC;

            u32     DC : node->bits_DC;

        };

        // Iterate through each key reference

        SKeyMeta* km = &node.keyspace;

        iterate (to node->keyCount; ++km)

        {

            // Code here can use km->RN, km->TC, km->DC as needed

        }

    }

-- 

Rick C. Hodgin