C Bindings: to_unsafe

to_unsafe

If a type defines a to_unsafe method, when passing it to C the value returned by this method will be passed. For example:

lib C
  fun exit(status : Int32) : NoReturn
end

class IntWrapper
  def initialize(@value)
  end

  def to_unsafe
    @value
  end
end

wrapper = IntWrapper.new(1)
C.exit(wrapper) # wrapper is not an Int32, but its to_unsafe
                # method is, so wrapper.to_unsafe
                # is passed instead

This is very useful for defining wrappers of C types without having to explicitly transform them to their wrapped values.

For example, the String class implements to_unsafe to return UInt8*:

lib C
  fun printf(format : UInt8*, ...) : Int32
end

a = 1
b = 2
C.printf "%d + %d = %d\n", a, b, a + b