A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple types of data that share the same representation. Classic examples include differentiating between measurements stored in different units, distinguishing between a string of HTML and a string of plain text (one of these needs to be encoded before it can safely be included in a web page!), or keeping track of pointers to physical memory or virtual memory when writing the lower layers of an operating system’s memory management.

Unless we’re using a richly-typed language like Haskell, where we can use newtype , the best solutions tend to just rely on convention. The much-maligned Hungarian Notiation evolved in part to try to combat this sort of problem – If you decide on a convention that variables representing physical addresses start with pa and virtual addresses start with va , then anyone who encounters a uintptr_t pa_bootstack; can immediately decode the intent.

It turns out, though, that we can get something very much like newtype in familiar old C. Suppose we’re writing some of the paging code for a toy x86 architecture. We’re going to be passing around a lot of physical and virtual addresses, as well as indexes of pages in RAM, and it’s going to be easy to confuse them all. The traditional solution is to use some typedef s, and then promise to be very careful to mix them up:

typedef uint32_t physaddr_t; typedef uint32_t virtaddr_t; typedef uint32_t ppn_t;

We have to promise not to mess up, though – the compiler isn’t going to notice if I pass a ppn_t to a function that wanted a physaddr_t .

This example was inspired by JOS, a toy operating system used by MIT’s Operating Systems Engineering class. JOS remaps all of physical memory starting at a specific virtual memory address ( KERNBASE ), and so provides the following macros:

/* This macro takes a kernel virtual address -- an address that points above * KERNBASE, where the machine's maximum 256MB of physical memory is mapped -- * and returns the corresponding physical address. It panics if you pass it a * non-kernel virtual address. */ #define PADDR(kva) \ ({ \ physaddr_t __m_kva = (physaddr_t) (kva); \ if (__m_kva < KERNBASE) \ panic("PADDR called with invalid kva %08lx", __m_kva);\ __m_kva - KERNBASE; \ }) /* This macro takes a physical address and returns the corresponding kernel * virtual address. It panics if you pass an invalid physical address. */ #define KADDR(pa) \ ({ \ physaddr_t __m_pa = (pa); \ uint32_t __m_ppn = PPN(__m_pa); \ if (__m_ppn >= npage) \ panic("KADDR called with invalid pa %08lx", __m_pa);\ (void*) (__m_pa + KERNBASE); \ })

Because the typedefs are unchecked by the compiler, though, it is a common mistake to use a physical address where a virtual address is meant, and nothing will catch it until your kernel triple-faults, and a long, painful debugging session ensues.

Inspired by Haskell’s newtype , though, it turns out we can get the compiler to check it for us, with a little more work, by using a singleton struct instead of a typedef :

typedef struct { uint32_t val; } physaddr_t;

If we wanted to be overly cute, we could even use a macro to mimic Haskell’s newtype :

#define NEWTYPE(tag, repr) \ typedef struct { repr val; } tag; \ static inline tag make_##tag(repr v) { \ return (tag){.val = v}; \ } \ static inline repr tag##_val(tag v) { \ return v.val; \ } NEWTYPE(physaddr, uint32_t); NEWTYPE(virtaddr, uint32_t); NEWTYPE(ppn, uint32_t);

Given those definitions, PADDR and KADDR become:

#define PADDR(kva) \ ({ \ if (virtaddr_val(kva) < KERNBASE) \ panic("PADDR called with invalid kva %08lx", virtaddr_val(kva)); \ make_physaddr(virtaddr_val(kva) - KERNBASE); \ }) #define KADDR(pa) \ ({ \ uint32_t __m_ppn = physaddr_val(pa) >> PTXSHIFT; \ if (__m_ppn >= npage) \ panic("KADDR called with invalid pa %08lx", physaddr_val(pa)); \ make_virtaddr(physaddr_val(pa) + KERNBASE); \ })

We have to use some accessor and constructor functions, but in exchange, we get strong type-checking: If you pass PADDR a physical address (or anything other than a virtual address), the compiler will catch it.

The wrapping and unwrapping is slightly annoying, but we can for the most part avoid having to do it everywhere, by pushing the wrapping and unwrapping down into some utility functions. For instance, a relatively common operation at this point in JOS is creating a page-table entry, given a physical address. If you want to construct the PTE by hand, you need to use physaddr_val every time. But a better plan is a simple utility function:

static inline pte_t make_pte(physaddr addr, int perms) { return physaddr_val(addr) | perms; }

In addition to losing the need to unwrap the physaddr everywhere, we gain a measure of clarity and typechecking – if you remember to use make_pte , you’ll never accidentally try to insert a virtual address into a page table.

We can add similar functions for converting between types, as well a a struct Page , used to track metadata for a physical page. As an experiment, I went and reimplemented JOS’s memory management primitives using these definitions, and only needed to use FOO_val or make_FOO a very few times outside of the header files that defined KADDR and friends.

While the typechecking is nice, any C programmer implementing a memory-management system is probably going to want to know: How much does it cost me? You’re creating and unpacking these singleton struct s everywhere – does that have a cost?

The answer, though, in almost all cases is “no” – A half-decent compiler will optimize the resulting code to be completely identical to the code without the struct s, in almost all cases.

Also, the in-memory representation of the struct is going to be exactly the same as the bare value – it’s even guaranteed to have the same alignment and padding constraints, so if you need to embed a physaddr inside another struct, or into an array, the representation is identical to the physaddr_t typedef.

On i386, parameters are passed on the stack, so that means that passing the struct is identical to passing the uint32_t . On amd64, as described last week, small structures are passed in registers, and so, again, the calling convention is identical.

Unfortunately, the i386 ABI specifies that returned struct s always go on the stack (while integers go in %eax ), so you do pay slightly if you want to return one of these typedef’d objects. amd64 will also break it down into a register, though, so on a 64-bit machine it’s again identical.

If you’re worried, though, you can always use the preprocessor to make the checks vanish for a production build:

#ifdef NDEBUG #define NEWTYPE(tag, repr) \ typedef repr tag; \ static inline tag make_##tag(repr v) { \ return v; \ } \ static inline repr tag##_val(tag v) { \ return v; \ } #else /* Same definition as above */ #endif

Because the types have identical representations, you can safely serialize your structs and exchange them between code compiled with either version. On amd64, you can probably even call between compilation units defined either way.

The next time you’re writing some subtle C code that has to deal with multiple types with the same representation, I encourage you to consider using this trick.

I didn’t invent this trick, although as far as I know the NEWTYPE macro is my own invention (Edited to add: A commenter points out that I’m not the first to use the newtype name in C, although I think I prefer my implementation).

. I learned this trick from the Linux kernel, which uses it for a very similar application – distinguishing entries in different levels of the x86 page tables. page.h on amd64 includes following definitions [Taken from an old version, but the current version has equivalent ones):

/* * These are used to make use of C type-checking.. */ typedef struct { unsigned long pte; } pte_t; typedef struct { unsigned long pmd; } pmd_t; typedef struct { unsigned long pud; } pud_t; typedef struct { unsigned long pgd; } pgd_t;

I claimed above that the struct and the bare type will have the same alignment and padding. I don’t believe this is guaranteed by C99, but the SysV amd64 and i386 ABI specifications both require:

Structures and unions assume the alignment of their most strictly aligned component. Each member is assigned to the lowest available offset with the appropriate alignment. The size of any object is always a multiple of the object’s alignment.

(text quoted from the amd64 document, but the i386 one is almost identical).

And C99 requires (§6.7.2.1 para 13):

… A pointer to a structure object, suitably converted, points to its initial member (or if that member is a bit-field, then to the unit in which it resides), and vice versa. There may be unnamed padding within a structure object, but not at its beginning.