Hi, I am just trying to wrap (parts of) the OpenSSL¹ bignum library (large integer arithmetic) into something that makes using it look at least a little bit more elegant than using the naked procedural C API while at the same time trying to not overdo it and not create a heavy code monster instead of a lightweight wrapper.
The problem is: Each bignum needs to be allocated by OpenSSL and freed when no longer needed. If I make a Pascal Object or Class representing a bignum and overload the arithmetic operators and then have expressions like (a+b)*(c+d) I would need to find a way to create and destroy anonymous instances of bignums on the fly. I have tried making use of Interface and TInterfacedObject and this seems to do what I want: for example when witing A := A + B the + operator would return a new instance and the reference counting would then automatically call the destructor of A when it assigns the newly created number. The question is: Isn't using interfaces only to get reference counting complete overkill in this situation, isn't there a more lightweight way of doing this (or something similar)? And also maybe does some clever and elegant pattern exist that would enable me to simply reuse the instance of A (if an initialized object exists already on the left side of the assignment) instead of destroying it and creating a new one? (OpenSSL would theoretically allow me to reuse the same allocated number handle for the result of an operation, I could do BN_add(a,a,a) without allocating more than one number handle)? Bernd _____ ¹ I depend on OpenSSL already anyways, so I thought why not make use of its bignum too when I need it. _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
