[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0016 - Adding initializers to Int and UInt to convert from UnsafePointer and UnsafeMutablePointer

[Richard Ross]

Just for note, an alternative that works right now (whether intentional or not) is this:

let rawAddress: Int = UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt8>(nil).distanceTo(myPointer)

This gives the distance in bytes (so on 95% of all platforms, the raw address). It currently isn't clear that this is how you can accomplish this in swift, so I'm +1 on the proposal. 
--
Richard

> On Mar 22, 2016, at 8:24 PM, Joseph Lord via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 22, 2016, at 9:35 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello Swift community,
>> 
>> The review of "Adding initializers to Int and UInt to convert from UnsafePointer and UnsafeMutablePointer" begins now and runs through March 25th. The proposal is available here:
>> 
>>   https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0016-initializers-for-converting-unsafe-pointers-to-ints.md
> 
> I give the concept a +1. Swift should support dangerous actions but should make them clear and obvious. I do think that there is room to improve the argument label. There are two issues with "bitPattern" that concern me:
> 1) it should be clear that it will be the bitPattern of the pointer itself not whatever the pointer refers to.
> 2) it doesn't indicate the danger of using the results of this 
> 
> I don't have a great alternative to bitPattern but maybe something like: "rawMemoryAddress"
> 
> I've read the proposal and given it a little bit of thought but have not yet read preceding or recent comments. 
> 
> Joseph
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