Empedding perl into C - how to pass complex structures to the perl ?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am trying to do an interpreter between perl and C (win32). The proplem is that none of the examples found at the www, perldoc and etc do not show how to pass a typedef structures from C to perl, manipulate the data, and then return the data back to the C. For example If defined structure in C is

typedef struct {
  int   Msg;        
  short uid;         
  short LineType;     
  char  *Line;         // pointer to text
  char  Sound;         // 0 for no sound, otherwise sound #
  char *Cmd;           // String of command including !
  char OpOnly;         // Is the command for ops only?
  char *HelpFile;      // Help Filename for this command
  int  CmdID;          // CmdID - The bot core doesn't care about this
+,
} BOTMSG;
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I would love to see this stucture in perl like a HASH or OO. For example

sub set_struct {
    xxxxx = @_; #  <-- ???
    $BOTMSG{Msg} = "1";
    $BOTMSG{uid} = "1024";
    $BOTMSG{LineType} = "100";
    $BOTMSG{Line} = "Hello World\n";
    $BOTMSG{Cmd} = "/!say";
    $BOTMSG{OpOnly} = "yes";
    $BOTMSG{HelpFile} = "C\tmp\help\help1.txt";
    $BOTMSG{CmdID} = "1234567890";
    return %BOTMSG;
};
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The given examples in Perlembed documentation only show how to pass a single pointer, an integer, or an string value but it do not say anything about passing complex structures and how to manipulate those in perl. I appreciate all help you can give me,
-jari-
jari@subspace.nu

Comment on Empedding perl into C - how to pass complex structures to the perl ? Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Empedding perl into C - how to pass complex structures to the perl ? by broquaint (Abbot) on Feb 27, 2002 at 13:16 UTC
Check out Inline::Struct for all your C/C++ struct munging needs :-) HTH broquaint	[reply]
Re: Empedding perl into C - how to pass complex structures to the perl ? by Matts (Deacon) on Feb 27, 2002 at 13:16 UTC
If you want it to be a hash you're going to have to construct a HV*, and possibly create a reference to it (RV) to pass to Perl. None of this is automatic for you, and if you do construct a hash don't expect the values to be updatable automatically. See perlguts for details on doing all of that. Alternatively hide it in a class, and provide accessors to the data parts. See the XS Cookbook (CookbookA and CookbookB on CPAN) for details on how to do this.	[reply]
Re: Re: Empedding perl into C - how to pass complex structures to the perl ? by Anonymous Monk on Feb 28, 2002 at 08:15 UTC
Thnx you, I am seeing that this will not going to be ez for me : ). Any possibilities you could write a small example by constructing a HV*, creating the reference and then passing it to perl, please, please ?=) ..Im sure this is the solution I am looking out. -jari- jari@subspace.nu	[reply]