Technical - C structs in R

Structs in C

structs in C are a data structure for combining items which may be of different types.

In Cairo, a common struct contains the data defining a single rectangle.

typedef struct _cairo_rectangle {
    double x, 
    double y, 
    double width, 
    double height;
} cairo_rectangle_t;

Elements of a struct may be accessed by name using -> or . depending on whether it is a pointer or not

void some_function(cairo_rectangle_t *my_rect) {
  printf("My rectangle width is %f\n", my_rect->width);
}

Structs in R

structs in R are implemented as external pointer objects:

• they’re opaque in the sense that you can’t see into them.
• they’re pointer objects in the sense that they are what R refers to as External Pointers, and merely contain the address of the data in memory.

In this next example, a rectangle struct is created in R. Note:

• The function for the creation of a struct is the same name as the struct itself
• The class of the returned object is the same as the struct
• The object is an external pointer

my_rect <- cairo_rectangle_t(x = 10, y = 10, width = 100, height = 200)

my_rect

#> <pointer: 0x7fea5f893310>
#> attr(,"class")
#> [1] "cairo_rectangle_t"

typeof(my_rect)

#> [1] "externalptr"

class(my_rect)

#> [1] "cairo_rectangle_t"

Struct helpers in R - as.list()

For some structs, the as.list() method has been implemented on the class to convert the external pointer to a regular R list.

Note: This is not currently a link between the external pointer data and the list representation. Changing one of the objects doesn’t not change the other one.

as.list(my_rect)

#> $x
#> [1] 10
#> 
#> $y
#> [1] 10
#> 
#> $width
#> [1] 100
#> 
#> $height
#> [1] 200