6.1 Built-In Types

Foreign Type: :char

Foreign Type: :unsigned-char

Foreign Type: :short

Foreign Type: :unsigned-short

Foreign Type: :int

Foreign Type: :unsigned-int

Foreign Type: :long

Foreign Type: :unsigned-long

Foreign Type: :long-long

Foreign Type: :unsigned-long-long

These types correspond to the native C integer types according to the ABI of the Lisp implementation’s host system.

:long-long and :unsigned-long-long are not supported natively on all implementations. However, they are emulated by mem-ref and mem-set.

When those types are not available, the symbol cffi-sys::no-long-long is pushed into *features*.

Foreign Type: :uchar

Foreign Type: :ushort

Foreign Type: :uint

Foreign Type: :ulong

Foreign Type: :llong

Foreign Type: :ullong

For convenience, the above types are provided as shortcuts for unsigned-char, unsigned-short, unsigned-int, unsigned-long, long-long and unsigned-long-long, respectively.

Foreign Type: :int8

Foreign Type: :uint8

Foreign Type: :int16

Foreign Type: :uint16

Foreign Type: :int32

Foreign Type: :uint32

Foreign Type: :int64

Foreign Type: :uint64

Foreign Type: :size

Foreign Type: :ssize

Foreign Type: :intptr

Foreign Type: :uintptr

Foreign Type: :ptrdiff

Foreign Type: :offset

Foreign integer types of specific sizes, corresponding to the C types defined in stdint.h.

Foreign Type: :float

Foreign Type: :double

On all systems, the :float and :double types represent a C float and double, respectively. On most but not all systems, :float and :double represent a Lisp single-float and double-float, respectively. It is not so useful to consider the relationship between Lisp types and C types as isomorphic, as simply to recognize the relationship, and relative precision, among each respective category.

Foreign Type: :long-double

This type is only supported on SCL.

Foreign Type: :pointer &optional type

A foreign pointer to an object of any type, corresponding to void *. You can optionally specify type of pointer (e.g. (:pointer :char)). Although CFFI won’t do anything with that information yet, it is useful for documentation purposes.

Foreign Type: :void

No type at all. Only valid as the return type of a function.