Option Explicit

Dim perlProc As WshExec
Dim perlIn As TextStream
Dim perlOut As TextStream

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
  Dim wsh As New WshShell
  Set perlProc = wsh.Exec("C:\perl\bin\perl C:\perl\play\wordnet-ipc.pl ")
  Set perlIn = perlProc.StdIn
  Set perlOut = perlProc.StdOut
End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
  perlProc.Terminate
End Sub


##</code><code>##

Function doQueryWord(aWord As String, aRole as String) As String
  ' Construct a command in the simple protocol wordnet-ipc expects
  Dim cmd as String
  cmd = "word" & ";" & aWord & ";" & aRole

  ' Send the command to the waiting perl script
  perlIn.writeLine cmd

  ' Read the output from the perl script.  This will block until output appears.
  Dim results As String
  results = perlOut.readLine

  ' Return results.  You could split on commas - not sure what format you need.
  doQueryWord = results
End Function

' doQuerySense would be nearly identical