Context: Odin’s Most Misunderstood Feature

4 days ago

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Odin's context system is designed for intercepting third-party code to modify functionality, such as allocation or logging.
The context is implicitly passed by pointer in each scope, allowing for interception without modifying the original code.
Common misunderstandings include thinking context is for minimizing typing or dynamic scoping, but its primary purpose is interception.
Context provides default values for allocators, logging, random number generation, and user data pointers, which can be overridden.
The system is inspired by Jonathan Blow's language but focuses on third-party code interception rather than dynamic scoping.
Context's ABI layout is fixed to ensure stability across LIB/DLL boundaries, preventing custom fields from disrupting interception.
Implementation choices include passing context as an implicit pointer argument and using copy-on-write semantics to prevent back-propagation.

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