Custom allocation of cells

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

I'd like to know whether one can reliably allocate a cell on its own,
without using `scm_cell ()'.  Basically, I read appendix A of the manual
and I'm now naively trying to do my own cell allocation.  Here is a
(stupid and ugly) example:

  SCM_DEFINE (scm_do_pair, "do-pair", 2, 0, 0,
              (SCM car, SCM cdr),
              "")
  {
    static SCM room[512];
    static SCM *where = &room[0];
    SCM the_pair;
    size_t incr;

    if ((scm_t_bits)where & 6)
      {
        /* Align the cell pointer so that Guile considers it as a
           non-immediate object (see tags.h).  */
        incr = (scm_t_bits)where & 6;
        incr = (~incr) & 7;
        where += incr;
      }

    where[0] = car;
    where[1] = cdr;

    the_pair = PTR2SCM (where);

    return (the_pair);
  }

This does return a pair, but the next time the GC runs, Guile
segfaults.  This is because `SCM_SET_GC_MARK ()' assumes that WHERE is
located within a cell segment, which is not the case here.

So my question is: Is there a way to allocate cells, cheaper than
`scm_cell ()', that could be used?  This would be particularly useful
for Guile-VM.  When calling a procedure (i.e. with the interpreter, via
`scm_apply ()'), the VM as to build a list out of the arguments which
are already available on the stack, and this turns out to be pretty
costly.

Thanks,
Ludovic.