Accessing runtime functions from Red/System

Question

So the issue came up while experimenting with marshaling values back and forth between Red and Red/System. I would like to access the guts of an object passed to a routine.

I had noticed that there are functions in the Red Runtime for handling things like this, get-values, get-words, etc in the object context. There is a file in the runtime sources called object.reds

How do I utilize these? Can I utilize these? Is there a way to access them without re-including (and by extension compiling) a copy of the (already included) runtime into my app?

Answer 1

You can just call these from inside Red/System routines right away. No additional include is necessary. Here's a brief example:

Red []

get-object-size: routine [
    obj [object!]
    return: [integer!]
] [
    object/get-size obj
]

print get-object-size object [foo: 42 bar: 99]

When you compile and run this, it will eventually output 2.

Answer 2

In general, for each Red datatype there is a Red/System file in the sources (see the repository) which defines a context whose name is the same as that datatype without the ! (except for context! and function!, where a _ is prefixed to avoid name clashes). Within such a context, there are functions defined for each of the actions on values of that type, as well as auxiliary functions that may be useful within routines. However, I would imagine that the auxiliary functions, not being tied to the language specification, are not guaranteed to be there as the implementation evolves. Thus I would caution against relying on them too much.