/* -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- * $Id: Stable.c,v 1.25 2003/03/31 19:19:34 sof Exp $
+ * $Id: Stable.c,v 1.26 2003/06/24 13:45:49 stolz Exp $
*
* (c) The GHC Team, 1998-2002
*
There may be additional functions on the C side to allow evaluation,
application, etc of a stable pointer.
- When Haskell calls C, it normally just passes over primitive integers,
- floats, bools, strings, etc. This doesn't cause any problems at all
- for garbage collection because the act of passing them makes a copy
- from the heap, stack or wherever they are onto the C-world stack.
- However, if we were to pass a heap object such as a (Haskell) @String@
- and a garbage collection occured before we finished using it, we'd run
- into problems since the heap object might have been moved or even
- deleted.
-
- So, if a C call is able to cause a garbage collection or we want to
- store a pointer to a heap object between C calls, we must be careful
- when passing heap objects. Our solution is to keep a table of all
- objects we've given to the C-world and to make sure that the garbage
- collector collects these objects --- updating the table as required to
- make sure we can still find the object.
*/
snEntry *stable_ptr_table = NULL;