Cocoa equivalent of the Carbon method getPtrSize

Question

I need to translate the a carbon method into cocoa into and I am having trouble finding any documentation about what the carbon method getPtrSize really does. From the code I am translating it seems that it returns the byte representation of an image but that doesn't really match up with the name. Could someone give me a good explanation of this method or link me to some documentation that describes it. The code I am translating is in a common lisp implementation called MCL that has a bridge to carbon (I am translating into CCL which is a common lisp implementation with a Cocoa bridge). Here is the MCL code (#_before a method call means that it is a carbon method):

(defmethod COPY-CONTENT-INTO ((Source inflatable-icon)
                              (Destination inflatable-icon))
  ;; check for size compatibility to avoid disaster
  (unless (and (= (rows Source) (rows Destination)) 
               (= (columns Source) (columns Destination))
               (= (#_getPtrSize (image Source))
                  (#_getPtrSize (image Destination))))
    (error "cannot copy content of source into destination
inflatable icon: incompatible sizes"))
  ;; given that they are the same size only copy content
  (setf (is-upright Destination) (is-upright Source))
  (setf (height Destination) (height Source))
  (setf (dz Destination) (dz Source))
  (setf (surfaces Destination) (surfaces Source))
  (setf (distance Destination) (distance Source))
  ;; arrays
  (noise-map Source)  ;; accessor makes array if needed
  (noise-map Destination)  ;; ;; accessor makes array if needed
  (dotimes (Row (rows Source))
    (dotimes (Column (columns Source))
      (setf (aref (noise-map Destination) Row Column)
            (aref (noise-map Source) Row Column))
      (setf (aref (altitudes Destination) Row Column)
            (aref (altitudes Source) Row Column))))
  (setf (connectors Destination)
        (mapcar #'copy-instance (connectors Source)))
  (setf (visible-alpha-threshold Destination)
        (visible-alpha-threshold Source))
  ;; copy Image: slow byte copy
  (dotimes (I (#_getPtrSize (image Source)))
    (%put-byte (image Destination) (%get-byte (image Source) i) i))
  ;; flat texture optimization:
  ;; do not copy texture-id
  ;;   -> destination should get its own texture id from OpenGL
  (setf (is-flat Destination) (is-flat Source))
  ;; do not compile flat textures: the display list overhead
  ;; slows things down by about 2x
  (setf (auto-compile Destination) (not (is-flat Source)))
  ;; to make change visible we have to reset the compiled flag
  (setf (is-compiled Destination) nil))

Answer 1

GetPtrSize is a function from the Memory Manager. When you allocated memory with NewPtr (another Memory Manager function), the Memory Manager would keep track of how much memory you asked for, so that you could retrieve that number with GetPtrSize.

The modern replacement for NewPtr is malloc, which provides no such functionality. There is a malloc_size function, but the number it returns may be rounded up to some increment, so it may be greater than the number you asked for originally. You can see how that would be (at least conceptually) bad.

The only accurate replacement for GetPtrSize is simply to keep track of the sizes of the buffers yourself.

Alternatively, you might replace these buffers with NSMutableData objects. An NSMutableData encapsulates a buffer and its size, making it easy to keep them together.