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proposal: unsafe: make the Pointer type declaration consistent with the ones in the "builtin" package #36282

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go101 opened this issue Dec 26, 2019 · 3 comments
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proposal: unsafe: make the Pointer type declaration consistent with the ones in the "builtin" package #36282

go101 opened this issue Dec 26, 2019 · 3 comments
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@go101
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go101 commented Dec 26, 2019

In the current unsafe code, the Pointer is declared as

type ArbitraryType int
type Pointer *ArbitraryType

which might be good in some aspects, but it is also bad in some other aspects:

  1. it is not consistent with the type int int style in the builtin package.
  2. it leans to make people think the underlying type of Pointer is not itself.
  3. it brings some troubles for implementing some code analysis tools.

So, I propose that using the following way to declare the Pointer type:

type Pointer Pointer

and we can mention the Pointer type is a builtin type and acts as a *ArbitraryType in its document.
@go101 go101 changed the title propsoal: unsafe: make the Pointer type declaration consistent with the ones in "builtin" package proposal: unsafe: make the Pointer type declaration consistent with the ones in the "builtin" package Dec 26, 2019
@gopherbot gopherbot added this to the Proposal milestone Dec 26, 2019
@robpike
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robpike commented Dec 26, 2019 •
edited

That won't parse. it's not a valid declaration of Pointer. The trick works in the builtin package because when we say

type bool bool

The bool on the right is a name that has already been declared.

@ianlancetaylor
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I think it's quite reasonable to say that the underlying type of int is int, but that the underlying of unsafe.Pointer is not unsafe.Pointer. The underlying type of unsafe.Pointer is a pointer type; we just don't have a way to write what it points to, which is why the package says ArbitraryType.

@go101
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go101 commented Dec 27, 2019

OK, I will close this issue.

@go101 go101 closed this as completed Dec 27, 2019
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