DRAFT: Synopsis 21: Calling Foreign Code
Tim Nelson <[email protected]>
Larry Wall <[email protected]>
Created: 27 Feb 2009
Last Modified: 27 Feb 2009
Version: 1
The document is a draft.
If you read the HTML version, it is generated from the Pod in the specs repository under https://github.com/perl6/specs/blob/master/S21-calling-foreign-code.pod so edit it there in the git repository if you would like to make changes.
Unfortunately, calling foreign code properly is quite platform dependent. This means that parts of the external calling conventions can't be standardised. But the parts that can be standardised are specified here.
The use
statement allows an external language to be specified in addition to (or instead of) an authority, so that you can use modules from other languages. The from
adverb also parses any additional parts as short-form arguments. For instance:
use Whiteness:from<perl5>:name<Acme::Bleach>:auth<cpan:DCONWAY>:ver<1.12>;
use Whiteness:from<perl5 Acme::Bleach cpan:DCONWAY 1.12>; # same thing
use libc:from<C>;
XXX We need a discussion of how to link to some of the common platforms
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