Efficient CStruct

Dealing with complex C-structure-like data in haskell often force the developer to have to deal with C files, and create a system that is usually a tradeoff between efficiency, modularity and safety.

The Foreign class doesn't quite cut it, external program needs C files, binary parsers (binary, cereal) are not efficient or modular.

Let's see if we can do better using the advanced haskell type system.

First let define a common like C structure that we will re-use to compare different methods:

struct example { uint64_t a; uint32_t b; union { uint64_t addr64; struct { uint32_t hi; uint32_t low; } addr32; } addr; uint8_t data[ 16 ]; };

Dealing with C structure

The offset of each field is defined as a displacement (in bytes) from the beginning of the structure to point at the beginning of the field memory representation. For example here we have:

a is at offset 0 (relative to the beginning of the structure)

is at offset 0 (relative to the beginning of the structure) b is at offset 8

is at offset 8 addr.addr64 is at offset 12

is at offset 12 addr.addr32.hi is at offset 12

is at offset 12 addr.addr32.low is at offset 16

is at offset 16 data is at offset 20

The size of primitives is simply the number of bits composing the type; so a uint64_t , composed of 64 bits is 8 bytes. Union is a special construction where the different option in the union are overlayed on each other and the biggest element define its size. The size of a struct is defined recursively as the sum of all its component.

field pointed by a is size 8

is size 8 field pointed by b is of size 4

is of size 4 field pointed by addr is size 8

is size 8 field pointed by data is size 16

is size 16 the whole structure is size 36

What's wrong with Foreign

Here's the usual Foreign definition for something equivalent:

data Example = Example { a :: {-# UNPACK #-} ! Word64 , b :: {-# UNPACK #-} ! Word32 , u :: {-# UNPACK #-} ! Word64 , data :: ! ByteString } peekBs p ofs len = ... instance Foreign Example sizeof _ = 36 alignment _ = 8 peek p = Example <$> peek (castPtr p) <*> peek (castPtr (p ` plusPtr ` 8 )) <*> peek (castPtr (p ` plusPtr ` 12 )) <*> peekBs p 20 16 poke p _ = ...

Given a (valid) Ptr, we can now get element in this by creating a new Example type by calling peek . This will materalize a new haskell data structure in the haskell GC-managed memory which have a copy of all the fields from the Ptr.

In some cases, copying all this values on the haskell heap is wasteful and not efficient. A simple of this use case, would be to quickly iterate over a block of memory to check for a few fields values repeatedly in structure.

The Foreign type classes and co is only about moving data between the foreign boundary, it's not really about efficiency dealing with this foreign boundary.

In short:

Materialize values on the haskell side

Not modular: whole type peeking/poking or nothing.

Size and alignment defined on values, not type.

No distinction between constant size types and variable size types.

Often passing undefined :: SomeType to sizeof and alignment.

to sizeof and alignment. Usually manually created, not typo-proof.

What about binary parsers

There's many binary parser on the market: binary , cereal, packer, store.

Most of a binary parser job is taking a stream of bytes and efficiently turning those bytes into haskell value. One added job is dealing with chunking, since you may not have all the memory for parsing, you need to deal with values that are cut between memory boundaries and have to deal with resumption.

Here's an example of a binary parser for example:

getExample :: Get Example getExample = Example <$> getWord64Host <*> getWord32Host <*> getWord64Host <*> getByteString 16

However, intuitively this has the exact same problem as Foreign , you can't selectively and modularly deal with the data, and this create also full copy of the data on the haskell side. This is clearly warranted when dealing with memory that you want processed in chunks, since you can't hold on to the data stream to refer to it later.

Defining a C structure in haskell

Dealing with memory directly is error prone and it would be nice to able to simulate C structures overlay on memory without having to deal with size, offset and composition manually and to remain as efficient as possible.

First we're gonna need a recent GHC (at least 8.0) and the following extensions:

{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds #-} {-# LANGUAGE TypeOperators #-} {-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-} {-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-} {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-} {-# LANGUAGE AllowAmbiguousTypes #-}

Then the following imports:

import GHC.TypeLits import Data.Type.Bool import Data.Proxy import Data.Int import Data.Word

We define a simple ADT of all the possible elements that you can find, and their compositions:

data Element = FInt8 | FWord8 | FInt16 | FWord16 | FInt32 | FWord32 | FInt64 | FWord64 | FFloat | FDouble | FLong | FArray Nat Element -- size of the element and type of element | FStruct [( Symbol , Element )] -- list of of field * type | FUnion [( Symbol , Element )] -- list of field * type

now struct example can be represented with:

type Example = ' FStruct '[ '( " a " , ' FWord64 ) , '( " b " , ' FWord32 ) , '( " addr ", ' FUnion '[ '( " addr64 ", ' FWord64 ) , '( " addr32 ", ' FStruct '[ '( " hi ", ' FWord32 ) , '( " low ", ' FWord32 ) ]) ]) , '( " data ", ' FArray 16 ' FWord8 ) ]

Calculating sizes

Size is one of the key thing we need to be able to do on element.

Using a type family we can define the Size type which take an Element and returns a Nat representing the size of the element.

type family Size (t :: Element ) where

This is very easy for our primitives types:

Size (' FInt8 ) = 1 Size (' FWord8 ) = 1 Size (' FInt16 ) = 2 Size (' FWord16 ) = 2 Size (' FInt32 ) = 4 Size (' FWord32 ) = 4 Size (' FInt64 ) = 8 Size (' FWord64 ) = 8 Size (' FFloat ) = 4 Size (' FDouble ) = 8 Size (' FLong ) = 8 -- hardcoded for example sake, but would be dynamic in real code

The array is simply the Size of the element multiplied by the number of elements:

Size (' FArray n el) = n * Size el

For the constructed elements, we need to define extra recursive type families. The structure is recursively defined to be the sum of its component Size, and the union is recursively defined as the biggest element in it,.

Size (' FStruct ls) = StructSize ls Size (' FUnion ls) = UnionSize ls type family StructSize (ls :: [( Symbol , Element )]) where StructSize ' [] = 0 StructSize ('(_,l) ': ls) = Size l + StructSize ls type family UnionSize (ls :: [( Symbol , Element )]) where UnionSize ' [] = 0 UnionSize ('(_,l) ': ls) = If ( Size l <=? UnionSize ls) ( UnionSize ls) ( Size l)

Almost there, we only need a way to materialize the Size type, to have a value that we can use in our haskell code:

getSize :: forall el . KnownNat ( Size el ) => Integer getSize = natVal ( Proxy :: Proxy ( Size el))

This looks a bit magic, so let's decompose this to make clear what happens; first getSize is a constant Integer, it doesn't have any parameters. Next the el type variable represent the type that we want to know the size of, and the contraint on el is that applying the Size type function, we have a KnownNat (Known Natural). In the body of the constant function we use natVal that takes a Proxy of a KnownNat to materialize the value.

Given this signature, despite being a constant value, getSize need to determine the element on which it is applied. We can use the Type Application to effectively force the el element to be what we want to resolve to:

> putStrLn $ show (getSize @ Example ) 36

Zooming with accessors

One first thing we need to have an accessor types to represent how we represent part of data structures. For example in C, given the struct example , we want to be able to do:

. a . addr . addr32 . hi . data [ 3 ] . data

in a case of a structure or a union, we use the field name to dereference the structure, but in case of an array, we use an integral index. This is really straighforward:

data Access = Field Symbol | Index Nat

A List of Access would represent the zooming inside the data structures. The previous example can be written in haskell with:

'[ ' Field " a " ] '[ ' Field " addr ", ' Field " addr32 ", ' Field " hi " ] '[ ' Field " data ", ' Index 3 ] '[ ' Field " data " ]

Calculating Offset

Offset of fields is the next important step to have full capabilities in this system

We define a type family for this that given an Element and [Access] would get back an offset in Nat. Note that due to the recurvise approach we add the offset ofs to start from.

type family Offset (ofs :: Nat ) (accessors :: [ Access ]) (t :: Element ) where

When the list of accessors is empty, we have reach the element, so we can just return the offset we have calculated

Offset ofs ' [] t = ofs

When we have a non empty list we call to each respective data structure with:

the current offset

the name of field searched or the index searched

either the dictionary of symbol to element (represented by '[(Symbol, Element)] ) or the array size and inner Element

Offset ofs (' Field f:fs) (' FStruct dict) = StructOffset ofs f fs dict Offset ofs (' Field f:fs) (' FUnion dict) = UnionOffset ofs f fs dict Offset ofs (' Index i:fs) (' FArray n t) = ArrayOffset ofs i fs n t

Being a type enforced definition, it also mean that with this you can mix up trying to Index into a Structure, or trying to dereference a Field into an Array. the type system will (too) emphatically complain.

Both the Structure and Union will recursely match in the dictionary of symbol to find a matching field. If we reach the empty list, we haven't found the right field and the developper is notified with a friendly TypeError, at compilation time, that the field is not present in the structure.

Each time an field is skipped in the structure the size of the element being skipped, is added to the current offset.

type family StructOffset (ofs :: Nat ) (field :: Symbol ) (rs :: [ Access ]) (dict :: [( Symbol , Element )]) where StructOffset ofs field rs ' [] = TypeError (' Text " offset: field " ':<>: ' ShowType field ':<>: ' Text " not found in structure ") StructOffset ofs field rs ('(field, t) ': _) = Offset ofs rs t StructOffset ofs field rs ('(_ , v) ': r) = StructOffset (ofs + Size v) field rs r type family UnionOffset (ofs :: Nat ) (field :: Symbo ) (rs :: [ Access ]) (dict :: [( Symbol , Element )]) where UnionOffset ofs field rs ' [] = TypeError (' Text " offset: field " ':<>: ' ShowType field ':<>: ' Text " not found in union ") UnionOffset ofs field rs ('(field, t) ': _) = Offset ofs rs t UnionOffset ofs field rs (_ : r) = UnionOffset ofs field rs r

In the case of the array, we can just make sure, at compilation time, that the user is accessing a field that is within bounds, otherwise we also notify the developer with a friendly TypeError.

type family ArrayOffset (ofs :: Nat ) (idx :: Nat ) (rs :: [ Access ]) (n :: Nat ) (t :: Element ) where ArrayOffset ofs idx rs n t = If (n <=? idx) ( TypeError (' Text " out of bounds : index is " ':<>: ' ShowType idx ':<>: ' Text " but array of size " ':<>: ' ShowType n)) ( Offset (ofs + (idx * Size t)) rs t)

A simple example of how the machinery works:

> Offset ofs '[ ' Field " data ", ' Index 2 ]) Example > StructOffset ofs " data " [' Index 2 ] '[ '(" a ", ..), '(" b ", ..) , '(" addr ", ..), '( " data ", ..) ] > StructOffset (ofs + Size ' Word64 ) " data " [' Index 2 ] '[ '(" b ", ..) , '(" addr ", ..), '( " data ", ..) ] > StructOffset (ofs + 8 + Size ' Word32 ) " data " [' Index 2 ] '[ '(" addr ", ..), '( " data ", ..) ] > StructOffset (ofs + 12 + Size (' Union ..)) " data " [' Index 2 ] '[ '( " data ", ' Farray 16 ' FWord8 ) ] > Offset (ofs + 20 ) [' Index 3 ] (' FArray 16 ' FWord8 ) > Offset (ofs + 20 + 3 * Size ' FWord8 ) [] ' FWord8 > ofs + 23

Now we can just calculate Offset of accessors in structure, we just need something to use it.

getOffset :: forall el fields . ( KnownNat ( Offset 0 fields el )) => Integer getOffset = natVal ( Proxy :: Proxy ( Offset 0 fields el))

Again same magic as getSize , and we also define a constant by construction. We also start counting the offset at 0 since we want to calculate absolute displacement, but we could start at some other points depending on need, and prevent a runtime addition if we were to know the starting offset at compilation for example.

> putStrLn $ show (getOffset @ Example @(' [] ) 0 > putStrLn $ show (getOffset @ Example @('[ ' Field " a "])) 0 > putStrLn $ show (getOffset @ Example @('[ ' Field " b "])) 8 > putStrLn $ show (getOffset @ Example @('[ ' Field " addr, 'Index "addr32" , 'Field "lo" "])) 16 > putStrLn $ show (getOffset @ Example @('[ ' Field " data, 'Index 3 ])) 23

Conclusion

One nice aspect on this is that you can efficiently nest structure, and you can without a problem re-use the same field names for structure.

You can also define at compilation all sorts of different offsets and sizes that automatically recalculate given their structures, and combine together.

With this primitive machinery, it's straighforward to define an efficient, safe, modular accessors (e.g. peek & poke) functions on top of this.

Code

You can find the code:

Notes

Packing & Padding

In all this code I consider the C structure packed, and not containing any padding. While the rules of alignment/padding could be added to the calculation types, I chose to ignore the issue since the developper can always from a packed structure definition, add the necessary padding explicitely in the definition. It would also be possible to define special padding types that automatically work out their size given how much padding is needed.

Endianness

I completely ignore endianness for simplicity purpose, but a real library would likely and simply extend the definitions to add explicit endianness for all multi-bytes types.

Nat and Integer