Lua

This page describes the detailed semantics underlying the FFI library and its interaction with both Lua and C code.

Given that the FFI library is designed to interface with C code and that declarations can be written in plain C syntax, it closely follows the C language semantics, wherever possible. Some minor concessions are needed for smoother interoperation with Lua language semantics.

Please don't be overwhelmed by the contents of this page — this is a reference and you may need to consult it, if in doubt. It doesn't hurt to skim this page, but most of the semantics "just work" as you'd expect them to work. It should be straightforward to write applications using the LuaJIT FFI for developers with a C or C++ background.

C Language Support

The FFI library has a built-in C parser with a minimal memory footprint. It's used by the ffi.* library functions to declare C types or external symbols.

Its only purpose is to parse C declarations, as found e.g. in C header files. Although it does evaluate constant expressions, it's not a C compiler. The body of inline C function definitions is simply ignored.

Also, this is not a validating C parser. It expects and accepts correctly formed C declarations, but it may choose to ignore bad declarations or show rather generic error messages. If in doubt, please check the input against your favorite C compiler.

The C parser complies to the C99 language standard plus the following extensions:

The following C types are predefined by the C parser (like a typedef, except re-declarations will be ignored):

You're encouraged to use these types in preference to compiler-specific extensions or target-dependent standard types. E.g. char differs in signedness and long differs in size, depending on the target architecture and platform ABI.

The following C features are not supported:

C Type Conversion Rules

Conversions from C types to Lua objects

These conversion rules apply for read accesses to C types: indexing pointers, arrays or struct/union types; reading external variables or constant values; retrieving return values from C calls:

Input Conversion Output
int8_t, int16_t→sign-ext int32_t → doublenumber
uint8_t, uint16_t→zero-ext int32_t → doublenumber
int32_t, uint32_t→ doublenumber
int64_t, uint64_tboxed value64 bit int cdata
double, float→ doublenumber
bool0 → false, otherwise trueboolean
enumboxed valueenum cdata
Complex numberboxed valuecomplex cdata
Vectorboxed valuevector cdata
Pointerboxed valuepointer cdata
Arrayboxed referencereference cdata
struct/unionboxed referencereference cdata

Bitfields are treated like their underlying type.

Reference types are dereferenced before a conversion can take place — the conversion is applied to the C type pointed to by the reference.

Conversions from Lua objects to C types

These conversion rules apply for write accesses to C types: indexing pointers, arrays or struct/union types; initializing cdata objects; casts to C types; writing to external variables; passing arguments to C calls:

Input Conversion Output
number→double
booleanfalse → 0, true → 1bool
nilNULL →(void *)
lightuserdatalightuserdata address →(void *)
userdatauserdata payload →(void *)
io.* fileget FILE * handle →(void *)
stringmatch against enum constantenum
stringcopy string data + zero-byteint8_t[], uint8_t[]
stringstring data →const char[]
functioncreate callback →C function type
tabletable initializerArray
tabletable initializerstruct/union
cdatacdata payload →C type

If the result type of this conversion doesn't match the C type of the destination, the conversion rules between C types are applied.

Reference types are immutable after initialization ("no re-seating of references"). For initialization purposes or when passing values to reference parameters, they are treated like pointers. Note that unlike in C++, there's no way to implement automatic reference generation of variables under the Lua language semantics. If you want to call a function with a reference parameter, you need to explicitly pass a one-element array.

Conversions between C types

These conversion rules are more or less the same as the standard C conversion rules. Some rules only apply to casts, or require pointer or type compatibility:

Input Conversion Output
Signed integer→narrow or sign-extendInteger
Unsigned integer→narrow or zero-extendInteger
Integer→rounddouble, float
double, float→trunc int32_t →narrow(u)int8_t, (u)int16_t
double, float→trunc(u)int32_t, (u)int64_t
double, float→roundfloat, double
Numbern == 0 → 0, otherwise 1bool
boolfalse → 0, true → 1Number
Complex numberconvert real partNumber
Numberconvert real part, imag = 0Complex number
Complex numberconvert real and imag partComplex number
Numberconvert scalar and replicateVector
Vectorcopy (same size)Vector
struct/uniontake base address (compat)Pointer
Arraytake base address (compat)Pointer
Functiontake function addressFunction pointer
Numberconvert via uintptr_t (cast)Pointer
Pointerconvert address (compat/cast)Pointer
Pointerconvert address (cast)Integer
Arrayconvert base address (cast)Integer
Arraycopy (compat)Array
struct/unioncopy (identical type)struct/union

Bitfields or enum types are treated like their underlying type.

Conversions not listed above will raise an error. E.g. it's not possible to convert a pointer to a complex number or vice versa.

Conversions for vararg C function arguments

The following default conversion rules apply when passing Lua objects to the variable argument part of vararg C functions:

Input Conversion Output
number→double
booleanfalse → 0, true → 1bool
nilNULL →(void *)
userdatauserdata payload →(void *)
lightuserdatalightuserdata address →(void *)
stringstring data →const char *
float cdata→double
Array cdatatake base addressElement pointer
struct/union cdatatake base addressstruct/union pointer
Function cdatatake function addressFunction pointer
Any other cdatano conversionC type

To pass a Lua object, other than a cdata object, as a specific type, you need to override the conversion rules: create a temporary cdata object with a constructor or a cast and initialize it with the value to pass:

Assuming x is a Lua number, here's how to pass it as an integer to a vararg function: 

ffi.cdef[[
int printf(const char *fmt, ...);
]]
ffi.C.printf("integer value: %d\n", ffi.new("int", x))

If you don't do this, the default Lua number → double conversion rule applies. A vararg C function expecting an integer will see a garbled or uninitialized value.

Note: this is the only place where creating a boxed scalar number type is actually useful. Never use ffi.new("int"), ffi.new("float") etc. anywhere else!

Ditto for ffi.cast(). Explicitly boxing scalars does not improve performance or force int or float arithmetic! It just adds costly boxing, unboxing and conversions steps. And it may lead to surprise results, because cdata arithmetic on scalar numbers is always performed on 64 bit integers.

Initializers

Creating a cdata object with ffi.new() or the equivalent constructor syntax always initializes its contents, too. Different rules apply, depending on the number of optional initializers and the C types involved:

Table Initializers

The following rules apply if a Lua table is used to initialize an Array or a struct/union:

Example: 

local ffi = require("ffi")

ffi.cdef[[
struct foo { int a, b; };
union bar { int i; double d; };
struct nested { int x; struct foo y; };
]]

ffi.new("int[3]", {})            --> 0, 0, 0
ffi.new("int[3]", {1})           --> 1, 1, 1
ffi.new("int[3]", {1,2})         --> 1, 2, 0
ffi.new("int[3]", {1,2,3})       --> 1, 2, 3
ffi.new("int[3]", {[0]=1})       --> 1, 1, 1
ffi.new("int[3]", {[0]=1,2})     --> 1, 2, 0
ffi.new("int[3]", {[0]=1,2,3})   --> 1, 2, 3
ffi.new("int[3]", {[0]=1,2,3,4}) --> error: too many initializers

ffi.new("struct foo", {})            --> a = 0, b = 0
ffi.new("struct foo", {1})           --> a = 1, b = 0
ffi.new("struct foo", {1,2})         --> a = 1, b = 2
ffi.new("struct foo", {[0]=1,2})     --> a = 1, b = 2
ffi.new("struct foo", {b=2})         --> a = 0, b = 2
ffi.new("struct foo", {a=1,b=2,c=3}) --> a = 1, b = 2  'c' is ignored

ffi.new("union bar", {})        --> i = 0, d = 0.0
ffi.new("union bar", {1})       --> i = 1, d = ?
ffi.new("union bar", {[0]=1,2}) --> i = 1, d = ?    '2' is ignored
ffi.new("union bar", {d=2})     --> i = ?, d = 2.0

ffi.new("struct nested", {1,{2,3}})     --> x = 1, y.a = 2, y.b = 3
ffi.new("struct nested", {x=1,y={2,3}}) --> x = 1, y.a = 2, y.b = 3

Operations on cdata Objects

All standard Lua operators can be applied to cdata objects or a mix of a cdata object and another Lua object. The following list shows the predefined operations.

Reference types are dereferenced before performing each of the operations below — the operation is applied to the C type pointed to by the reference.

The predefined operations are always tried first before deferring to a metamethod or index table (if any) for the corresponding ctype (except for __new). An error is raised if the metamethod lookup or index table lookup fails.

Indexing a cdata object

A ctype object can be indexed with a string key, too. The only predefined operation is reading scoped constants of struct/union types. All other accesses defer to the corresponding metamethods or index tables (if any).

Note: since there's (deliberately) no address-of operator, a cdata object holding a value type is effectively immutable after initialization. The JIT compiler benefits from this fact when applying certain optimizations.

As a consequence, the elements of complex numbers and vectors are immutable. But the elements of an aggregate holding these types may be modified, of course. I.e. you cannot assign to foo.c.im, but you can assign a (newly created) complex number to foo.c.

The JIT compiler implements strict aliasing rules: accesses to different types do not alias, except for differences in signedness (this applies even to char pointers, unlike C99). Type punning through unions is explicitly detected and allowed.

Calling a cdata object

Arithmetic on cdata objects

Comparisons of cdata objects

cdata objects as table keys

Lua tables may be indexed by cdata objects, but this doesn't provide any useful semantics — cdata objects are unsuitable as table keys!

A cdata object is treated like any other garbage-collected object and is hashed and compared by its address for table indexing. Since there's no interning for cdata value types, the same value may be boxed in different cdata objects with different addresses. Thus, t[1LL+1LL] and t[2LL] usually do not point to the same hash slot, and they certainly do not point to the same hash slot as t[2].

It would seriously drive up implementation complexity and slow down the common case, if one were to add extra handling for by-value hashing and comparisons to Lua tables. Given the ubiquity of their use inside the VM, this is not acceptable.

There are three viable alternatives, if you really need to use cdata objects as keys:

Parameterized Types

To facilitate some abstractions, the two functions ffi.typeof and ffi.cdef support parameterized types in C declarations. Note: none of the other API functions taking a cdecl allow this.

Any place you can write a typedef name, an identifier or a number in a declaration, you can write $ (the dollar sign) instead. These placeholders are replaced in order of appearance with the arguments following the cdecl string: 

-- Declare a struct with a parameterized field type and name:
ffi.cdef([[
typedef struct { $ $; } foo_t;
]], type1, name1)

-- Anonymous struct with dynamic names:
local bar_t = ffi.typeof("struct { int $, $; }", name1, name2)
-- Derived pointer type:
local bar_ptr_t = ffi.typeof("$ *", bar_t)

-- Parameterized dimensions work even where a VLA won't work:
local matrix_t = ffi.typeof("uint8_t[$][$]", width, height)

Caveat: this is not simple text substitution! A passed ctype or cdata object is treated like the underlying type, a passed string is considered an identifier and a number is considered a number. You must not mix this up: e.g. passing "int" as a string doesn't work in place of a type, you'd need to use ffi.typeof("int") instead.

The main use for parameterized types are libraries implementing abstract data types (example), similar to what can be achieved with C++ template metaprogramming. Another use case are derived types of anonymous structs, which avoids pollution of the global struct namespace.

Please note that parameterized types are a nice tool and indispensable for certain use cases. But you'll want to use them sparingly in regular code, e.g. when all types are actually fixed.

Garbage Collection of cdata Objects

All explicitly (ffi.new(), ffi.cast() etc.) or implicitly (accessors) created cdata objects are garbage collected. You need to ensure to retain valid references to cdata objects somewhere on a Lua stack, an upvalue or in a Lua table while they are still in use. Once the last reference to a cdata object is gone, the garbage collector will automatically free the memory used by it (at the end of the next GC cycle).

Please note, that pointers themselves are cdata objects, however they are not followed by the garbage collector. So e.g. if you assign a cdata array to a pointer, you must keep the cdata object holding the array alive as long as the pointer is still in use: 

ffi.cdef[[
typedef struct { int *a; } foo_t;
]]

local s = ffi.new("foo_t", ffi.new("int[10]")) -- WRONG!

local a = ffi.new("int[10]") -- OK
local s = ffi.new("foo_t", a)
-- Now do something with 's', but keep 'a' alive until you're done.

Similar rules apply for Lua strings which are implicitly converted to "const char *": the string object itself must be referenced somewhere or it'll be garbage collected eventually. The pointer will then point to stale data, which may have already been overwritten. Note that string literals are automatically kept alive as long as the function containing it (actually its prototype) is not garbage collected.

Objects which are passed as an argument to an external C function are kept alive until the call returns. So it's generally safe to create temporary cdata objects in argument lists. This is a common idiom for passing specific C types to vararg functions.

Memory areas returned by C functions (e.g. from malloc()) must be manually managed, of course (or use ffi.gc()). Pointers to cdata objects are indistinguishable from pointers returned by C functions (which is one of the reasons why the GC cannot follow them).

Callbacks

The LuaJIT FFI automatically generates special callback functions whenever a Lua function is converted to a C function pointer. This associates the generated callback function pointer with the C type of the function pointer and the Lua function object (closure).

This can happen implicitly due to the usual conversions, e.g. when passing a Lua function to a function pointer argument. Or, you can use ffi.cast() to explicitly cast a Lua function to a C function pointer.

Currently, only certain C function types can be used as callback functions. Neither C vararg functions nor functions with pass-by-value aggregate argument or result types are supported. There are no restrictions on the kind of Lua functions that can be called from the callback — no checks for the proper number of arguments are made. The return value of the Lua function will be converted to the result type, and an error will be thrown for invalid conversions.

It's allowed to throw errors across a callback invocation, but it's not advisable in general. Do this only if you know the C function, that called the callback, copes with the forced stack unwinding and doesn't leak resources.

One thing that's not allowed, is to let an FFI call into a C function get JIT-compiled, which in turn calls a callback, calling into Lua again. Usually this attempt is caught by the interpreter first and the C function is blacklisted for compilation.

However, this heuristic may fail under specific circumstances: e.g. a message polling function might not run Lua callbacks right away and the call gets JIT-compiled. If it later happens to call back into Lua (e.g. a rarely invoked error callback), you'll get a VM PANIC with the message "bad callback". Then you'll need to manually turn off JIT-compilation with jit.off() for the surrounding Lua function that invokes such a message polling function (or similar).

Callback resource handling

Callbacks take up resources — you can only have a limited number of them at the same time (500 - 1000, depending on the architecture). The associated Lua functions are anchored to prevent garbage collection, too.

Callbacks due to implicit conversions are permanent! There is no way to guess their lifetime, since the C side might store the function pointer for later use (typical for GUI toolkits). The associated resources cannot be reclaimed until termination: 

ffi.cdef[[
typedef int (__stdcall *WNDENUMPROC)(void *hwnd, intptr_t l);
int EnumWindows(WNDENUMPROC func, intptr_t l);
]]

-- Implicit conversion to a callback via function pointer argument.
local count = 0
ffi.C.EnumWindows(function(hwnd, l)
  count = count + 1
  return true
end, 0)
-- The callback is permanent and its resources cannot be reclaimed!
-- Ok, so this may not be a problem, if you do this only once.

Note: this example shows that you must properly declare __stdcall callbacks on Windows/x86 systems. The calling convention cannot be automatically detected, unlike for __stdcall calls to Windows functions.

For some use cases, it's necessary to free up the resources or to dynamically redirect callbacks. Use an explicit cast to a C function pointer and keep the resulting cdata object. Then use the cb:free() or cb:set() methods on the cdata object: 

-- Explicitly convert to a callback via cast.
local count = 0
local cb = ffi.cast("WNDENUMPROC", function(hwnd, l)
  count = count + 1
  return true
end)

-- Pass it to a C function.
ffi.C.EnumWindows(cb, 0)
-- EnumWindows doesn't need the callback after it returns, so free it.

cb:free()
-- The callback function pointer is no longer valid and its resources
-- will be reclaimed. The created Lua closure will be garbage collected.

Callback performance

Callbacks are slow! First, the C to Lua transition itself has an unavoidable cost, similar to a lua_call() or lua_pcall(). Argument and result marshalling add to that cost. And finally, neither the C compiler nor LuaJIT can inline or optimize across the language barrier and hoist repeated computations out of a callback function.

Do not use callbacks for performance-sensitive work: e.g. consider a numerical integration routine which takes a user-defined function to integrate over. It's a bad idea to call a user-defined Lua function from C code millions of times. The callback overhead will be absolutely detrimental for performance.

It's considerably faster to write the numerical integration routine itself in Lua — the JIT compiler will be able to inline the user-defined function and optimize it together with its calling context, with very competitive performance.

As a general guideline: use callbacks only when you must, because of existing C APIs. E.g. callback performance is irrelevant for a GUI application, which waits for user input most of the time, anyway.

For new designs avoid push-style APIs: a C function repeatedly calling a callback for each result. Instead, use pull-style APIs: call a C function repeatedly to get a new result. Calls from Lua to C via the FFI are much faster than the other way round. Most well-designed libraries already use pull-style APIs (read/write, get/put).

C Library Namespaces

A C library namespace is a special kind of object which allows access to the symbols contained in shared libraries or the default symbol namespace. The default ffi.C namespace is automatically created when the FFI library is loaded. C library namespaces for specific shared libraries may be created with the ffi.load() API function.

Indexing a C library namespace object with a symbol name (a Lua string) automatically binds it to the library. First, the symbol type is resolved — it must have been declared with ffi.cdef. Then the symbol address is resolved by searching for the symbol name in the associated shared libraries or the default symbol namespace. Finally, the resulting binding between the symbol name, the symbol type and its address is cached. Missing symbol declarations or nonexistent symbol names cause an error.

This is what happens on a read access for the different kinds of symbols:

This is what happens on a write access:

C library namespaces themselves are garbage collected objects. If the last reference to the namespace object is gone, the garbage collector will eventually release the shared library reference and remove all memory associated with the namespace. Since this may trigger the removal of the shared library from the memory of the running process, it's generally not safe to use function cdata objects obtained from a library if the namespace object may be unreferenced.

Performance notice: the JIT compiler specializes to the identity of namespace objects and to the strings used to index it. This effectively turns function cdata objects into constants. It's not useful and actually counter-productive to explicitly cache these function objects, e.g. local strlen = ffi.C.strlen. OTOH, it is useful to cache the namespace itself, e.g. local C = ffi.C.

No Hand-holding!

The FFI library has been designed as a low-level library. The goal is to interface with C code and C data types with a minimum of overhead. This means you can do anything you can do from C: access all memory, overwrite anything in memory, call machine code at any memory address and so on.

The FFI library provides no memory safety, unlike regular Lua code. It will happily allow you to dereference a NULL pointer, to access arrays out of bounds or to misdeclare C functions. If you make a mistake, your application might crash, just like equivalent C code would.

This behavior is inevitable, since the goal is to provide full interoperability with C code. Adding extra safety measures, like bounds checks, would be futile. There's no way to detect misdeclarations of C functions, since shared libraries only provide symbol names, but no type information. Likewise, there's no way to infer the valid range of indexes for a returned pointer.

Again: the FFI library is a low-level library. This implies it needs to be used with care, but it's flexibility and performance often outweigh this concern. If you're a C or C++ developer, it'll be easy to apply your existing knowledge. OTOH, writing code for the FFI library is not for the faint of heart and probably shouldn't be the first exercise for someone with little experience in Lua, C or C++.

As a corollary of the above, the FFI library is not safe for use by untrusted Lua code. If you're sandboxing untrusted Lua code, you definitely don't want to give this code access to the FFI library or to any cdata object (except 64 bit integers or complex numbers). Any properly engineered Lua sandbox needs to provide safety wrappers for many of the standard Lua library functions — similar wrappers need to be written for high-level operations on FFI data types, too.

Current Status

The initial release of the FFI library has some limitations and is missing some features. Most of these will be fixed in future releases.

C language support is currently incomplete:

The JIT compiler already handles a large subset of all FFI operations. It automatically falls back to the interpreter for unimplemented operations (you can check for this with the -jv command line option). The following operations are currently not compiled and may exhibit suboptimal performance, especially when used in inner loops:

Other missing features: