INTERFACE BuiltinSpecials;

PROCEDURE Register ();

Registers Pickle.Specials for the types described below. Register is called by Pickle during its initialization, Pickle clients do not need to call it.

END BuiltinSpecials.

Some common Modula-3 types require special handling during pickling. This module provides that handling for the following types: Text8Literal.T, Text16Literal.T, Atom.T, and RefList.T.

Values of type Text8Literal.T and Text16Literal.T contain an overly large array of characters. But, these values are generated by the compiler and are not heap allocated. The pickle specials take care of the bogus array. Note that subtypes of these types are pickled by the default pickle writers.

Values of type Atom.T with any given name are expected to be unique within the process. The pickle specials make sure that this property is maintained.

Values of type RefList.T (and any other type derived from List.ig) may contain long chains of nodes which cause the recursive pickler to overflow its stack. The pickle specials iterate over the list without recursing on the stack. Note that subtypes of RefList.T are handled by the default pickle writers.