The joys of translating C++’s std::function to D

I wrote a program to translate C headers to D . Translating C was actually more challenging than I thought; I even got to learn things I didn’t know about the language even though I’ve known it for 24 years. The problems that I encountered were all minor though, and to the extent of my knowledge have all been resolved (modulo bugs).

C++ is a much larger language, so the effort should be considerably more. I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it’s been however, and in this blog I want to talk about how “interesting” it was to translate C++11’s std::function by hand.

The first issue for most languages would be that it relies on template specialisation:

template<typename>
class function;  // doesn't have a definition anywhere

template<typename R, typename... Args>
class function<R(Args...)> { /* ... */ }

This is a way of constraining the std::function template to only accept function types. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the C++ syntax for the type of a function that takes two ints and returns a double is double(int, int) . I doubt most people see this outside of C++ standard library templates. If it’s still confusing, think of double(int, int) as the type that is obtained by deferencing a pointer of type double(*)(int, int) .

D is, as far as I know, the only other language other than C++ to support partial template specialisation. There are however two immediate problems:

function

I can mitigate the name issue by calling the symbol function_ instead; however, this will affect name mangling, meaning nothing will actually link. D does have pragma(mangle) to tell the compiler how to mangle symbols, but std::function is a template; it doesn’t have any mangling until it’s instantiated. Let’s worry about that later and call the template function_ for now.

The second issue can be worked around:

// C++: `using funPtr = double(*)(int, int);`
alias funPtr = double function(int, int);
// C++: `using funType = double(int, int);`
alias funType = typeof(*funPtr.init);

As in C++, the function type is the type one gets from deferencing a function pointer. Unlike C++, currently there’s no syntax to write it directly. First attempt:

// helper to automate getting an alias to a function type
template FunctionType(R, Args...) {
    alias ptr = R function(Args);
    alias FunctionType = typeof(*ptr.init);
}

struct function_(T);
struct function_(T: FunctionType!(R, Args), R, Args...) { }

This doesn’t work, probably due to this bug preventing the helper template FunctionType from working as intended. Let’s forget the template constraint:

extern(C++, "std") {
    struct function_(T) {
        import std.traits: ReturnType, Parameters;
        alias R = ReturnType!T;
        alias Args = Parameters!T;
        // In C++: `R operator()(Args) const`;
        R opCall(Args) const;
    }
}

void main() {
    alias funPtr = double function(double);
    alias funType = typeof(*funPtr.init);
    function_!funType f;
    double result = f(3.3);
}

This compiles but it doesn’t link: there’s an undefined reference to std::function_::operator()(double) const . Looking at the symbols in the object files using nm , we see that g++ emitted _ZNKSt8functionIFddEEclEd but dmd is trying to link to _ZNKSt9function_IFddEEclEd . As expected, name mangling issues related to renaming the symbol.

We could manually add a pragma(mangle) to tell D how to mangle the operator for the double(double) template instantiation, but that solution doesn’t scale. CTFE ( constexpr if you speak C++ but not D) to the rescue!

// snip - as before
pragma(mangle, opCall.mangleof.fixMangling)
R opCall(Args) const;

// (elsewhere at file scope)
string fixMangling(string str) {
    import std.array: replace;
    return str.replace("9function_", "8function");
}

What’s going on here is an abuse of D’s compile-time power. The .mangleof property is a compile-time string that tells us how a symbol is going to be mangled. We pass this string to the fixMangling function which is evaluated at compile-time and fed back to the compiler telling it what symbol name to actually use. Notice that function_ is still a template, meaning .mangleof has a different value for each instantiation . It’s… almost magical. Hacky, but magical.

The final code compiles and links. Actually creating a valid std::function<double(double)> from D code is left as an exercise to the reader.