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=head1 TITLE
Perl should allow specially attributed subs to be called as C functions
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 28 Sep 2000
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 334
Version: 1
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
One of the goals of the perl 6 port is to be able to call perl
routines just as if they were routines in a compiled language. This
makes callbacks into perl from embedded apps easier, and it makes it a
lot easier on us when we have folks writing low-level bits of the perl
system in perl.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Any sub that has the appropriate attribute can be called from C (or some other
compiled language). Perl will automagically convert the input
parameters (which is what the attributes tells us) to things perl can
use, and be off and running.
Prototypes are insufficient to the task, as they don't get detailed
enough, nor do they detail the return value (which does need to be a
single thing)
This means that a sub like this:
sub foo : C_visible("i", "iii") {#sub body}
can be called from C code that looks like:
int ret;
a = foo(1, 2, 3);
Assuming that foo is really the perl sub. (A method to get a pointer
to the function will be needed)
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
Perl will generate vararg functions on the fly for any sub with the
appropriate attribute. This is very platform specific, unfortunately,
but there's no real way around it. The generated function doesn't need
to be all that funky--one that knows the address of the 'real' perl
sub's coderef and that knows how to slurp in the passed in parameters
is sufficient.
=head1 REFERENCES
None.
