A type
declaration inside a lib
declares a kind of C typedef
, but stronger:
lib X type MyInt = Int32 end
Unlike C, Int32
and MyInt
are not interchangeable:
lib X type MyInt = Int32 fun some_fun(value : MyInt) end X.some_fun 1 # Error: argument 'value' of 'X#some_fun' must be X::MyInt, not Int32
Thus, a type
declaration is useful for opaque types that are created by the C library you are wrapping. An example of this is the C FILE
type, which you can obtain with fopen
.
Refer to the type grammar for the notation used in typedef types.
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https://crystal-lang.org/docs/syntax_and_semantics/c_bindings/type.html