RE: Problem with Perl bindings?

[Bert Huijben]

svn_hash_sets() was only introduced a few months ago as an optimized version 
for apr_hash_set() for strings.

 

This could be a bug introduced during the semi-automatic conversion…

 

Are you on irc/im?

(I’m debugging onther perl binding problems from Windows right now and maybe we 
can share some ideas)

 

                Bert

 

From: Roderich Schupp [mailto:roderich.sch...@gmail.com] 
Sent: woensdag 24 juli 2013 13:30
To: dev
Cc: Ben Reser
Subject: Problem with Perl bindings?

 

Hi,

I'm investigating a problem with the Perl bindings and it looks as if an APR 
hash gets

corrupted when it's marshalled to/from Perl.

Specifically I'm looking at 
/subversion/bindings/swig/perl/libsvn_swig_perl/swigutil_pl.c (from trunk)

and the function svn_swig_pl_to_hash. This is the universal converter from 
"Perl hash of somethings"

to "APR hash of somethings (else)". The guts of this function is (comments are 
mine):

    apr_hash_t *hash;
    HV *h;
    char *key;
    I32 cnt, retlen;

    // create the APR hash that we're going to return

    hash = apr_hash_make(pool);

    // prepare to iterate over the Perl hash "source" (both keys and values, 
like "each %hash" in Perl)

    h = (HV *)SvRV(source);
    cnt = hv_iterinit(h);

     while (cnt--) {

        // get the next key (into "key") and value (into "item")

        SV* item = hv_iternextsv(h, &key, &retlen);

        // convert value from Perl to SVN using the supplied callback cv

        void *val = cv(item, ctx, pool);

        // store converted value under key in APR hash

        svn_hash_sets(hash, key, val);
    }

IMHO the last statement  is problematic: The Perl API call hv_iternextsv just

stores a pointer to the Perl internal key string into "key". And we use this

internal pointer to set the APR hash key. Shouldn't we make a copy

of the string (in some pool) and use that to set the APR hash key?

Note: if this is indeed a problem it may have gone unrecognized for a long time.

The reason is that the keys for all Perl hashes in a program are stored in

a central location, i.e. if we have hashes %foo and %bar that both

have a key "fubar", then this "fubar" is stored only once. And "fubar"

will only be garbage collected (and the bytes at its address recycled)
if no hash anywhere contains a key "fubar" anymore.

Cheers, Roderich