External code can be loaded into a running Scheme 48 process
and C object-file bindings can be dereferenced at runtime and
their values called
(although not all versions of Unix support all of this).
The required Scheme functions are in the structure dynamic-externals.
Dynamic-load loads the named file into the current
process, raising an exception if the file cannot be found or if dynamic
loading is not supported by the operating system.
The file must have been compiled and linked appropriately.
For Linux, the following commands compile foo.c into a
file foo.so that can be loaded dynamically.
% gcc -c -o foo.o foo.c % ld -shared -o foo.so foo.o
(get-external string) -> external
(external? x) -> boolean
(external-name external) -> string
(external-value external) -> byte-vector
Get-external returns an external object that contains the
value of name, raising an exception if there is no such
value in the current process.
External? is the predicate for externals, and
external-name and external-value return the name and
value of an external.
The value is returned as byte vector of length four (on 32-bit
architectures).
The value is that which was extant when get-external was
called.
The following two functions can be used to update the values of
externals.
Lookup-external updates the value of external by looking up its
name in the current process, returning #t if the name is bound
and #f if it is not.
Lookup-all-externals calls lookup-external on all extant
externals, returning #f any are unbound.
An external whose value is a C procedure can be called using
call-external.
See
the section on calling C functions from Scheme
for more information.
In some versions of Unix retrieving a value from the current process may require a non-trivial amount of computation. We recommend that a dynamically-loaded file contain a single initialization procedure that creates shared bindings for the values exported by the file.
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