On Sun, Aug 10, 2025 at 07:43:00PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > I see you (Patrice) implemented a C version of a change I'd made to a Perl > function: > > How was I supposed to know that the C function existed?
You can grep the name in the C code, except for a few functions, the names are the same or very similar. > The only explanation I have is that these C functions are used directly > by C versions of the conversion code, but they are not available from > Perl code as XSUBs. Exactly. There are lots of C code that do the same as Perl code, but is not directly called as XS. Actually, the less XS interfaces there are and the more C only (and Perl only) code there are, the simpler, as having interfaces always require doing additional error prone codes to make sure that the two underlying data are in sync. > Is it correct that these functions are not available as XSUBs? If so, > what's the difference between the Perl functions that have XSUB versions > and those that do not? And how is somebody working on the Perl source code > supposed to know when there is a C version they should be updating too? For parsing, structure, transformations, conversion back to Texinfo, conversion to raw Text and to identifiers, conversion to HTML and main program (texi2any.pl), there is a complete coverage in C, so every function in the Perl codes is supposed to have a at least one corresponding function (or, sometime, when there is not a perfect mapping between the functions in the two langauges, equivalent code) in C. This includes Texinfo::Indices, Texinfo::ManipulateTree, Texinfo::Document, Texinfo::Translations and Texinfo::OutputUnits.pm, and most of Texinfo::Common and Texinfo::Convert::Unicode functions used in the previously mentionned codes. There can be, in addition, some XS interface code, and some code to call Perl from C. For conversion helper functions, such as functions in Texinfo::Convert::Converter, probably some functions in Texinfo::Common and some functions in Texinfo::Convert::Utils, but probably not all (I haven't checked in details). For the main program, the corresponding code is in texi2any.c and convert/texinfo.c. For the other codes, sometime the organization of the code is similar to Perl, but not always, because of the different contraints for both codebases. For instance, delayed loading of Perl modules for Transformations on the Perl side, and Gnulib C/Perl C constraints of C + no undefined. -- Pat
