Cycle in the struct layout that doesn't exist

Question

This is a simplified version of some of my code:

public struct info
{
    public float a, b;
    public info? c;

    public info(float a, float b, info? c = null)
    {
        this.a = a;
        this.b = b;
        this.c = c;
    }
}

The problem is the error Struct member 'info' causes a cycle in the struct layout. I'm after struct like value type behaviour. I could simulate this using a class and a clone member function, but I don't see why I should need to.

How is this error true? Recursion could perhaps cause construction forever in some similar situations, but I can't think of any way that it could in this case. Below are examples that ought to be fine if the program would compile.

new info(1, 2);
new info(1, 2, null);
new info(1, 2, new info(3, 4));

edit:

The solution I used was to make "info" a class instead of a struct and giving it a member function to returned a copy that I used when passing it. In effect simulating the same behaviour as a struct but with a class.

I also created the following question while looking for an answer.

Value type class definition in C#?

Answer 1

The reason why this creates a cycle is that Nullable<T> is itself a struct. Because it refers back to info you have a cycle in the layout (info has a field of Nullable<info> and it has a field of info) . It's essentially equivalent to the following

public struct MyNullable<T> {
  public T value;
  public bool hasValue;
}

struct info { 
  public float a, b;
  public MyNullable<info> next;
}

Answer 2

It's not legal to have a struct that contains itself as a member. This is because a struct has fixed size, and it must be at least as large as the sum of the sizes of each of its members. Your type would have to have 8 bytes for the two floats, at least one byte to show whether or not info is null, plus the size of another info. This gives the following inequality:

 size of info >= 4 + 4 + 1 + size of info

This is obviously impossible as it would require your type to be infinitely large.

You have to use a reference type (i.e. class). You can make your class immutable and override Equals and GetHashCode to give value-like behaviour, similar to the String class.

Answer 3

There isn't any way to achieve mutable value semantics of variable-sized items (semantically, I think what you're after is to have MyInfo1 = MyInfo2 generate a new linked list which is detached from the one started by MyInfo2). One could replace the info? with an info[] (which would always either be null or else populated with a single-element array), or with a holder class that wraps an instance of info, but the semantics would probably not be what you're after. Following MyInfo1 = MyInfo2, changes to MyInfo1.a would not affect MyInfo2.a, nor would changes to MyInfo1.c affect MyInfo2.c, but changes to MyInfo1.c[0].a would affect MyInfo2.c[0].a.

It would be nice if a future version of .net could have some concept of "value references", so that copying a struct wouldn't simply copy all of its fields. There is some value to the fact that .net does not support all the intricacies of C++ copy constructors, but there would also be value in allowing storage locations of type 'struct' to have an identity which would be associated with the storage location rather than its content.

Given that .net does not presently support any such concept, however, if you want info to be mutable, you're going to have to either put up with mutable reference semantics (including protective cloning) or with weird and wacky struct-class-hybrid semantics. One suggestion I would have if performance is a concern would be to have an abstract InfoBase class with descendants MutableInfo and ImmutableInfo, and with the following members:

1. AsNewFullyMutable -- Public instance -- Returns a new MutableInfo object, with data copied from the original, calling AsNewFullyMutable on any nested references.

2. AsNewMutable -- Public instance -- Returns a new MutableInfo object, with data copied from the original, calling AsImmutable on any nested references.

3. AsNewImmutable -- Protected instance -- Returns a new ImmutableInfo object, with data copied from the orignal, calling AsImmutable (not AsNewImmutable) on any nested references.

4. AsImmutable -- Public virtual -- For an ImmutableInfo, return itself; for a MutableInfo, call AsNewImmutable on itself.

5. AsMutable -- Public virtual -- For a MutableInfo, return itself; for an ImmutableInfo, call AsNewMutable on itself.

When cloning an object, depending upon whether one expected that the object or its descendants would be cloned again before it had to be mutated, one would call either AsImmutable, AsNewFullyMutable, or AsNewMutable. In scenarios where one would expect an object to be repeatedly defensively cloned, the object would be replaced by an immutable instance which would then no longer have to be cloned until there was a desire to mutate it.

Answer 4

The real problem is on this line:

public info? c;

Since this is a struct, C# needs to know the inner info/s layout before it could produce outer info's layout. And the inner info includes an inner inner info, which in turn includes an inner inner inner info, and so on. The compiler cannot produce a layout because of this circular reference issue.

Note: info? c is a shorthand for Nullable<info> which is itself a struct.