Procedural types and method pointers

• Type: feature
• Status: done
• Owner: —
• Opened: 2026-06-16 (spawned from the async spawn-ABI decision)
• Unblocks: feature-async-coroutines

Motivation

The async arc needed a way for a library Spawn/CoStart to call a coroutine body entry(arg) — but PXX could not call a proc-typed variable with arguments (p(42) was a parse error). Rather than a per-target asm entry shim, we added real procedural types (standard Pascal, reusable everywhere: callbacks, event handlers, dispatch tables) — which then made CoStart pure library.

Delivered

• Plain procedural types (all 4 Linux targets, byte-identical): type T = procedure(...) / function(...): R; proc-typed var / param / global / local; @Proc and nil assignment; v(args) indirect call in statement and expression position; arg-count check against the signature. Side-fix: @proc (IR_PROCADDR) now works on i386/aarch64/arm32 (was x86-64-only).
• Method pointers of object (x86-64): a 16-byte Code/Data value; m := @obj.Method + m(args) injects Self. x86-64 only because class instances are x86-64 only (see feature-cross-target-feature-parity) — the cross codegen is in place and latent-correct for when classes land.

Mechanism: AN_CALL_IND/IR_CALL_IND; the signature is a body-less Procs[] entry referenced by parallel arrays AliasProcSig / SymProcSig (per the TSymbol-field landmine). Tests test/test_proctype.pas (test-core + test-i386) and test/test_methcall.pas (test-core).

Landmines (recorded)

• Type name TProc collides with the compiler's own internal TProc record (hard-coded in IsRecordType); don't name proc types after compiler-internal records.
• Driver loops need an explicit IR_CALL_IND case (emit iff statement root) or the i386/aarch64/arm32 else catch-all double-emits an expression-context call.

Acceptance

v(args) through a proc-typed variable calls correctly (statement + expression, all 4 targets); @obj.Method method pointers call with Self on x86-64; bootstrap

• cross-bootstrap byte-identical. Met.

Log

• 2026-06-16 — Phase A (plain) + Phase B (method ptrs) + @proc cross-port landed (commits 59e1f4d, 8fe957e, d84fc08). Closed.