[plt-scheme] ffi question, _string/utf-16

Robert Nikander wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a C function like
>
> void get_chars(int n, uint16 *str);
>
> that fills the buffer 'str' with a utf-16 string. I'd like to call it
> and end up with a Scheme string. It looks like the "_string/utf-16"
> ctype knows how to do the conversion, but I don't see how to use it in
> this case. Can I?
It would be nice to use _string/utf-16 as an output type, but it doesn't
seem like thats provided. You can probably make a new custom type that
converts between a sequence of 16-bit characters into regular scheme
strings. I'll admit that I don't know much about unicode and its
variations but the only function I could find in mzscheme that dealt
with converting utf16 into something else was scheme_utf16_to_ucs4. I
hacked this up

void x( int x, unsigned char * q ){
q[0] = 0;
q[1] = 'b';
q[2] = 0;
q[3] = 'd';
q[4] = 0;
q[5] = 0;
}

(require (lib "foreign.ss"))(unsafe!)

(define libx (ffi-lib "libx"))

(define convert (get-ffi-obj "scheme_utf16_to_ucs4" #f (_fun _bytes _int
_int (out : (_bytes o length)) (length : _int) (_ptr o _int) _int ->
_pointer -> out)))

(define x (get-ffi-obj "x" libx (_fun (length : _int) (foo : (_bytes o
(+ length 2))) -> _void -> (convert foo 0 length (+ length 1) 0))))

(printf "~a\n" (x 6))

mzscheme -vf x.ss
Welcome to MzScheme v371 [3m], Copyright (c) 2004-2007 PLT Scheme Inc.
bd


`scheme_utf16_to_ucs4' is what the foreign library uses internally to
convert utf16 into a scheme string.