While working on FixedArr, I was thinking what else can be useful for Yaksha. I came up with two ideas.

New annotation ideas #

Packed ##

This will compile a struct into a packed struct. This will be useful for writing binary parsers. #pragma push(pack, N) will be used to pack the struct.

I’m also thinking to limit this to only structs and not classes.

1@packed("1")
2struct Foo:
3    a: u8
4    b: u16

Expose ##

This will expose a struct / class / function to C. This will be useful for exposing things to C (access from @native). Tuples cannot be exposed to C.

1@expose("foo") # foo will be the name of the function in `C`
2def foo(a: u8, b: u16) -> u32:
3    return a + b

FixedArr #

Auto casting ##

• FixedArr and Array can be casted to Ptr, AnyPtr and AnyPtrToConst.

Returning FixedArr from functions ##

Since FixedArr is allocated on stack, it is not possible to return it from a function in C. However, if we wrap it in a struct or Tuple, it is possible to return it from a function.

If we can add few quality of life improvements to Tuple, it will be easy to use it as a wrapper for FixedArr.

1def foo() -> Tuple[FixedArr[u8, 2]]:
2    return tuple(fixedarr(1u8, 2u8))

Impossible assigns (Impossible in C should not mean impossible in Yaksha) ##

If we can make fixed arrays and tuples assignable, we can do some interesting things.

1def foo():
2    a: FixedArr[u8, 2] = fixedarr(1u8, 2u8)
3    b: FixedArr[u8, 2]
4    a = b # This is not possible nowS