NiceFFI::Struct constructor does not allow zero arguments

[tmilker]

I am trying to switch my wrapper over to NiceFFI, from FFI, but when I change my FFI::Struct inheritances to NiceFFI::Struct, ruby starts throwing wrong number of arguments errors in my test app because I am trying to new stuff up without a ptr(valid with FFI).

Am I doing something wrong?

[tmilker]

Another thing is that NiceFFI does not allow partial initialization like FFI(well, I guess FFI does not have this initialization at all). For example:

     class Color_t < NiceFFI::Struct
        layout :r, :uint8,
               :g, :uint8,
               :b, :uint8,
      end

And then you try:

    Color_t.new({ :r => 127 })

will throw an error:

    gems/nice-ffi-0.4/lib/nice-ffi/struct.rb:372:in `[]=': no implicit conversion from nil to integer (TypeError)

[jacius]

You're not doing anything wrong, I just hadn't thought about creating a new struct without initializing all the values. Would it meet your needs for the struct to be created with a new, zero-filled Buffer if no arguments are provided?

[tmilker]

Yeah sounds like what Ruby-FFI does. I am still pretty new to this so you may want to check that source.

[jacius]

Okay, I've implemented the new behaviors in my next branch (9110be614b4043ccf2f5908b0a434b31179b0fde). You can now create a struct with no arguments (or nil), or a hash with some members missing, or an Array that is too short or has nil for some members. Thanks for the suggestion, tmilker!