1 /* GNU Objective C Runtime class related functions
2 Copyright (C) 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2009
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 Contributed by Kresten Krab Thorup and Dennis Glatting.
6 Lock-free class table code designed and written from scratch by
9 This file is part of GCC.
11 GCC is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
12 terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
13 Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.
15 GCC is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
16 WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
17 FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
20 Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional
21 permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, version
22 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
24 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License and
25 a copy of the GCC Runtime Library Exception along with this program;
26 see the files COPYING3 and COPYING.RUNTIME respectively. If not, see
27 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */
30 The code in this file critically affects class method invocation
31 speed. This long preamble comment explains why, and the issues
35 One of the traditional weaknesses of the GNU Objective-C runtime is
36 that class method invocations are slow. The reason is that when you
39 array = [NSArray new];
41 this gets basically compiled into the equivalent of
43 array = [(objc_get_class ("NSArray")) new];
45 objc_get_class returns the class pointer corresponding to the string
46 `NSArray'; and because of the lookup, the operation is more
47 complicated and slow than a simple instance method invocation.
49 Most high performance Objective-C code (using the GNU Objc runtime)
50 I had the opportunity to read (or write) work around this problem by
51 caching the class pointer:
53 Class arrayClass = [NSArray class];
57 array = [arrayClass new];
58 array = [arrayClass new];
59 array = [arrayClass new];
61 In this case, you always perform a class lookup (the first one), but
62 then all the [arrayClass new] methods run exactly as fast as an
63 instance method invocation. It helps if you have many class method
64 invocations to the same class.
66 The long-term solution to this problem would be to modify the
67 compiler to output tables of class pointers corresponding to all the
68 class method invocations, and to add code to the runtime to update
69 these tables - that should in the end allow class method invocations
70 to perform precisely as fast as instance method invocations, because
71 no class lookup would be involved. I think the Apple Objective-C
72 runtime uses this technique. Doing this involves synchronized
73 modifications in the runtime and in the compiler.
75 As a first medicine to the problem, I [NP] have redesigned and
76 rewritten the way the runtime is performing class lookup. This
77 doesn't give as much speed as the other (definitive) approach, but
78 at least a class method invocation now takes approximately 4.5 times
79 an instance method invocation on my machine (it would take approx 12
80 times before the rewriting), which is a lot better.
82 One of the main reason the new class lookup is so faster is because
83 I implemented it in a way that can safely run multithreaded without
84 using locks - a so-called `lock-free' data structure. The atomic
85 operation is pointer assignment. The reason why in this problem
86 lock-free data structures work so well is that you never remove
87 classes from the table - and the difficult thing with lock-free data
88 structures is freeing data when is removed from the structures. */
90 #include "objc-private/common.h"
91 #include "objc-private/error.h"
92 #include "objc/objc.h"
93 #include "objc/objc-api.h"
95 #include "objc-private/runtime.h" /* the kitchen sink */
97 /* We use a table which maps a class name to the corresponding class
98 * pointer. The first part of this file defines this table, and
99 * functions to do basic operations on the table. The second part of
100 * the file implements some higher level Objective-C functionality for
101 * classes by using the functions provided in the first part to manage
105 ** Class Table Internals
108 /* A node holding a class */
109 typedef struct class_node
111 struct class_node
*next
; /* Pointer to next entry on the list.
112 NULL indicates end of list. */
114 const char *name
; /* The class name string */
115 int length
; /* The class name string length */
116 Class pointer
; /* The Class pointer */
120 /* A table containing classes is a class_node_ptr (pointing to the
121 first entry in the table - if it is NULL, then the table is
124 /* We have 1024 tables. Each table contains all class names which
125 have the same hash (which is a number between 0 and 1023). To look
126 up a class_name, we compute its hash, and get the corresponding
127 table. Once we have the table, we simply compare strings directly
128 till we find the one which we want (using the length first). The
129 number of tables is quite big on purpose (a normal big application
130 has less than 1000 classes), so that you shouldn't normally get any
131 collisions, and get away with a single comparison (which we can't
132 avoid since we need to know that you have got the right thing). */
133 #define CLASS_TABLE_SIZE 1024
134 #define CLASS_TABLE_MASK 1023
136 static class_node_ptr class_table_array
[CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
];
138 /* The table writing mutex - we lock on writing to avoid conflicts
139 between different writers, but we read without locks. That is
140 possible because we assume pointer assignment to be an atomic
142 static objc_mutex_t __class_table_lock
= NULL
;
144 /* CLASS_TABLE_HASH is how we compute the hash of a class name. It is
145 a macro - *not* a function - arguments *are* modified directly.
147 INDEX should be a variable holding an int;
148 HASH should be a variable holding an int;
149 CLASS_NAME should be a variable holding a (char *) to the class_name.
151 After the macro is executed, INDEX contains the length of the
152 string, and HASH the computed hash of the string; CLASS_NAME is
155 #define CLASS_TABLE_HASH(INDEX, HASH, CLASS_NAME) \
157 for (INDEX = 0; CLASS_NAME[INDEX] != '\0'; INDEX++) \
159 HASH = (HASH << 4) ^ (HASH >> 28) ^ CLASS_NAME[INDEX]; \
162 HASH = (HASH ^ (HASH >> 10) ^ (HASH >> 20)) & CLASS_TABLE_MASK;
164 /* Setup the table. */
166 class_table_setup (void)
168 /* Start - nothing in the table. */
169 memset (class_table_array
, 0, sizeof (class_node_ptr
) * CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
);
171 /* The table writing mutex. */
172 __class_table_lock
= objc_mutex_allocate ();
176 /* Insert a class in the table (used when a new class is registered). */
178 class_table_insert (const char *class_name
, Class class_pointer
)
181 class_node_ptr new_node
;
183 /* Find out the class name's hash and length. */
184 CLASS_TABLE_HASH (length
, hash
, class_name
);
186 /* Prepare the new node holding the class. */
187 new_node
= objc_malloc (sizeof (struct class_node
));
188 new_node
->name
= class_name
;
189 new_node
->length
= length
;
190 new_node
->pointer
= class_pointer
;
192 /* Lock the table for modifications. */
193 objc_mutex_lock (__class_table_lock
);
195 /* Insert the new node in the table at the beginning of the table at
196 class_table_array[hash]. */
197 new_node
->next
= class_table_array
[hash
];
198 class_table_array
[hash
] = new_node
;
200 objc_mutex_unlock (__class_table_lock
);
203 /* Replace a class in the table (used only by poseAs:). */
205 class_table_replace (Class old_class_pointer
, Class new_class_pointer
)
210 objc_mutex_lock (__class_table_lock
);
213 node
= class_table_array
[hash
];
215 while (hash
< CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
)
220 if (hash
< CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
)
222 node
= class_table_array
[hash
];
227 Class class1
= node
->pointer
;
229 if (class1
== old_class_pointer
)
231 node
->pointer
= new_class_pointer
;
237 objc_mutex_unlock (__class_table_lock
);
241 /* Get a class from the table. This does not need mutex protection.
242 Currently, this function is called each time you call a static
243 method, this is why it must be very fast. */
245 class_table_get_safe (const char *class_name
)
250 /* Compute length and hash. */
251 CLASS_TABLE_HASH (length
, hash
, class_name
);
253 node
= class_table_array
[hash
];
259 if (node
->length
== length
)
261 /* Compare the class names. */
264 for (i
= 0; i
< length
; i
++)
266 if ((node
->name
)[i
] != class_name
[i
])
274 /* They are equal! */
275 return node
->pointer
;
279 while ((node
= node
->next
) != NULL
);
285 /* Enumerate over the class table. */
286 struct class_table_enumerator
294 class_table_next (struct class_table_enumerator
**e
)
296 struct class_table_enumerator
*enumerator
= *e
;
299 if (enumerator
== NULL
)
301 *e
= objc_malloc (sizeof (struct class_table_enumerator
));
303 enumerator
->hash
= 0;
304 enumerator
->node
= NULL
;
306 next
= class_table_array
[enumerator
->hash
];
310 next
= enumerator
->node
->next
;
315 enumerator
->node
= next
;
316 return enumerator
->node
->pointer
;
322 while (enumerator
->hash
< CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
)
324 next
= class_table_array
[enumerator
->hash
];
327 enumerator
->node
= next
;
328 return enumerator
->node
->pointer
;
333 /* Ok - table finished - done. */
334 objc_free (enumerator
);
339 #if 0 /* DEBUGGING FUNCTIONS */
340 /* Debugging function - print the class table. */
342 class_table_print (void)
346 for (i
= 0; i
< CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
; i
++)
351 node
= class_table_array
[i
];
355 printf ("\t%s\n", node
->name
);
361 /* Debugging function - print an histogram of number of classes in
362 function of hash key values. Useful to evaluate the hash function
365 class_table_print_histogram (void)
370 for (i
= 0; i
< CLASS_TABLE_SIZE
; i
++)
374 node
= class_table_array
[i
];
381 if (((i
+ 1) % 50) == 0)
383 printf ("%4d:", i
+ 1);
384 for (j
= 0; j
< counter
; j
++)
392 printf ("%4d:", i
+ 1);
393 for (j
= 0; j
< counter
; j
++)
399 #endif /* DEBUGGING FUNCTIONS */
402 ** Objective-C runtime functions
405 /* From now on, the only access to the class table data structure
406 should be via the class_table_* functions. */
408 /* This is a hook which is called by objc_get_class and
409 objc_lookup_class if the runtime is not able to find the class.
410 This may e.g. try to load in the class using dynamic loading. */
411 Class (*_objc_lookup_class
) (const char *name
) = 0; /* !T:SAFE */
414 /* True when class links has been resolved. */
415 BOOL __objc_class_links_resolved
= NO
; /* !T:UNUSED */
419 __objc_init_class_tables (void)
421 /* Allocate the class hash table. */
423 if (__class_table_lock
)
426 objc_mutex_lock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
428 class_table_setup ();
430 objc_mutex_unlock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
433 /* This function adds a class to the class hash table, and assigns the
434 class a number, unless it's already known. */
436 __objc_add_class_to_hash (Class
class)
440 objc_mutex_lock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
442 /* Make sure the table is there. */
443 assert (__class_table_lock
);
445 /* Make sure it's not a meta class. */
446 assert (CLS_ISCLASS (class));
448 /* Check to see if the class is already in the hash table. */
449 h_class
= class_table_get_safe (class->name
);
452 /* The class isn't in the hash table. Add the class and assign a class
454 static unsigned int class_number
= 1;
456 CLS_SETNUMBER (class, class_number
);
457 CLS_SETNUMBER (class->class_pointer
, class_number
);
460 class_table_insert (class->name
, class);
463 objc_mutex_unlock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
466 /* Get the class object for the class named NAME. If NAME does not
467 identify a known class, the hook _objc_lookup_class is called. If
468 this fails, nil is returned. */
470 objc_lookup_class (const char *name
)
474 class = class_table_get_safe (name
);
479 if (_objc_lookup_class
)
480 return (*_objc_lookup_class
) (name
);
485 /* Get the class object for the class named NAME. If NAME does not
486 identify a known class, the hook _objc_lookup_class is called. If
487 this fails, an error message is issued and the system aborts. */
489 objc_get_class (const char *name
)
493 class = class_table_get_safe (name
);
498 if (_objc_lookup_class
)
499 class = (*_objc_lookup_class
) (name
);
504 /* FIXME: Should we abort the program here ? */
505 _objc_abort ("objc runtime: cannot find class %s\n", name
);
511 objc_get_meta_class (const char *name
)
513 return objc_get_class (name
)->class_pointer
;
516 /* This function provides a way to enumerate all the classes in the
517 executable. Pass *ENUM_STATE == NULL to start the enumeration. The
518 function will return 0 when there are no more classes.
522 while ((class = objc_next_class (&es)))
523 ... do something with class;
526 objc_next_class (void **enum_state
)
530 objc_mutex_lock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
532 /* Make sure the table is there. */
533 assert (__class_table_lock
);
535 class = class_table_next ((struct class_table_enumerator
**) enum_state
);
537 objc_mutex_unlock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
542 /* Resolve super/subclass links for all classes. The only thing we
543 can be sure of is that the class_pointer for class objects point to
544 the right meta class objects. */
546 __objc_resolve_class_links (void)
548 struct class_table_enumerator
*es
= NULL
;
549 Class object_class
= objc_get_class ("Object");
552 assert (object_class
);
554 objc_mutex_lock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
556 /* Assign subclass links. */
557 while ((class1
= class_table_next (&es
)))
559 /* Make sure we have what we think we have. */
560 assert (CLS_ISCLASS (class1
));
561 assert (CLS_ISMETA (class1
->class_pointer
));
563 /* The class_pointer of all meta classes point to Object's meta
565 class1
->class_pointer
->class_pointer
= object_class
->class_pointer
;
567 if (! CLS_ISRESOLV (class1
))
569 CLS_SETRESOLV (class1
);
570 CLS_SETRESOLV (class1
->class_pointer
);
572 if (class1
->super_class
)
575 = objc_get_class ((char *) class1
->super_class
);
577 assert (a_super_class
);
579 DEBUG_PRINTF ("making class connections for: %s\n",
582 /* Assign subclass links for superclass. */
583 class1
->sibling_class
= a_super_class
->subclass_list
;
584 a_super_class
->subclass_list
= class1
;
586 /* Assign subclass links for meta class of superclass. */
587 if (a_super_class
->class_pointer
)
589 class1
->class_pointer
->sibling_class
590 = a_super_class
->class_pointer
->subclass_list
;
591 a_super_class
->class_pointer
->subclass_list
592 = class1
->class_pointer
;
595 else /* A root class, make its meta object be a subclass of
598 class1
->class_pointer
->sibling_class
599 = object_class
->subclass_list
;
600 object_class
->subclass_list
= class1
->class_pointer
;
605 /* Assign superclass links. */
607 while ((class1
= class_table_next (&es
)))
610 for (sub_class
= class1
->subclass_list
; sub_class
;
611 sub_class
= sub_class
->sibling_class
)
613 sub_class
->super_class
= class1
;
614 if (CLS_ISCLASS (sub_class
))
615 sub_class
->class_pointer
->super_class
= class1
->class_pointer
;
619 objc_mutex_unlock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
624 #define CLASSOF(c) ((c)->class_pointer)
627 class_pose_as (Class impostor
, Class super_class
)
629 if (! CLS_ISRESOLV (impostor
))
630 __objc_resolve_class_links ();
634 assert (super_class
);
635 assert (impostor
->super_class
== super_class
);
636 assert (CLS_ISCLASS (impostor
));
637 assert (CLS_ISCLASS (super_class
));
638 assert (impostor
->instance_size
== super_class
->instance_size
);
641 Class
*subclass
= &(super_class
->subclass_list
);
643 /* Move subclasses of super_class to impostor. */
646 Class nextSub
= (*subclass
)->sibling_class
;
648 if (*subclass
!= impostor
)
650 Class sub
= *subclass
;
653 sub
->sibling_class
= impostor
->subclass_list
;
654 sub
->super_class
= impostor
;
655 impostor
->subclass_list
= sub
;
657 /* It will happen that SUB is not a class object if it is
658 the top of the meta class hierarchy chain (root
659 meta-class objects inherit their class object). If
660 that is the case... don't mess with the meta-meta
662 if (CLS_ISCLASS (sub
))
665 CLASSOF (sub
)->sibling_class
=
666 CLASSOF (impostor
)->subclass_list
;
667 CLASSOF (sub
)->super_class
= CLASSOF (impostor
);
668 CLASSOF (impostor
)->subclass_list
= CLASSOF (sub
);
675 /* Set subclasses of superclass to be impostor only. */
676 super_class
->subclass_list
= impostor
;
677 CLASSOF (super_class
)->subclass_list
= CLASSOF (impostor
);
679 /* Set impostor to have no sibling classes. */
680 impostor
->sibling_class
= 0;
681 CLASSOF (impostor
)->sibling_class
= 0;
684 /* Check relationship of impostor and super_class is kept. */
685 assert (impostor
->super_class
== super_class
);
686 assert (CLASSOF (impostor
)->super_class
== CLASSOF (super_class
));
688 /* This is how to update the lookup table. Regardless of what the
689 keys of the hashtable is, change all values that are superclass
692 objc_mutex_lock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
694 class_table_replace (super_class
, impostor
);
696 objc_mutex_unlock (__objc_runtime_mutex
);
698 /* Next, we update the dispatch tables... */
699 __objc_update_dispatch_table_for_class (CLASSOF (impostor
));
700 __objc_update_dispatch_table_for_class (impostor
);