Agent Calls

Work in progress!

Terminology

In the following text the place where an agent is created (with the agent keyword or the tilde operator) is called the agent creation. The feature to which the agent points is the agent callee and the place (or places) where the agent is called is denoted agent call.

class 
    TERMINOLOGY
 
feature
 
    f1
        local
            p: PROCEDURE [ANY, TUPLE]
        do
            p := agent target   -- agent creation
        end
 
    f2 (p: PROCEDURE [ANY, TUPLE])
        do
            p.call ([])         -- agent call
        end
 
    target                      -- callee
        do
        end
end

Wrapper generation

Lets look first at frozen workbench code. Class C is used throughout the following examples.

class
    C
 
feature
    f (p1, p2: INTEGER; p3: STRING): STRING
        do
            ...
        end   
end

For everly agent creation a c-function is generated. This wrapper function does the following:

• Reorder the closed and open arguments.
• Calculate the proper agent callee based on the dynamic type of the target.
• Call the agent callee

The following agent creation:

agent f (?, 1, ?)

yields the following wrapper function:

agent f (?, 1, ?)