Self-ties, XSUBS and other forms of mental cruelty.

I'm trying to set up a self-tied hash in an XSUB.  The basic idea is
that I want to use the tie mechanism to 'on demand' populate the hash,
and remove the TIEHASH magic at the same time.  That way the first
access to the hash goes through the appropriate TIEHASH method,
populates the real hash, removes the tie and returns the appropriate
value.  Subsequent accesses then use the normal (faster) hash access
path rather than the tied one.  I've mocked this up as normal perl, and
it works fine.  However, I'm struggling to figure out how to self-tie a
hash from an XSUB.  I'm using Devel::Peek to compare the data structure
built by the perl version with the one built by the XSUB, and I can't
get them to correspond.

In the XSUB I've tried code like this:

/* Create the hash and bless it */
tmphv = newHV();
ref = newRV_noinc((SV*)tmphv);
sv_bless(ref, stash);

/* Self-tie the hash ('P' magic) */
ref = newRV_noinc((SV*)tmphv);
hv_magic(tmphv, (GV*)ref, 'P');

However, this just results in a data structure that sends Devel::Peek
into a recursive frenzy, due to the loop from the hash, via the magic
table, back to itself.  This is obviously wrong.  Can some kind soul
explain how the perl equivalent allows self-ties but avoids this
self-referential loop?

Many thanks,

Alan Burlison

• Self-ties, XSUBS and other forms of mental cruelty. by Alan Burlison
• Re: Self-ties, XSUBS and other forms of mental cruelty. by Alan Burlison