including perl dynamically into C

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

Ok, this one is a long shot, but i figure if anyone would know or have some sly tricks up their sleeves, it would be the monks....

Short version:
Is there a way to dynamically include perl code into a C program at runtime?

Long version:
i'm creating a daemon and originally planned to use shared libraries for dynamic functionality (depending on a config file, it would either load library A to interface with the mysql database, or library B to interface with a special format of text file, etc). This daemon would have some special characteristics that only a persistant daemon would run. I was hoping to be able to use pre-existing code to base the dynamic libs on...

Problem is, when i first wrote these programs, i wrote one (the file parser) in C and another (the mysql interface) in perl (using DBI). Rather than rewrite the perl code in C, i decided to experiment - i tried perlcc, with no avail (creating shared libraries is aparently disabled) I read up on Calling Perl from C Programs as well, but that appeared to only be able to compile in perl statically to the executable. So my question is this: is there a way of creating an equivilant system to loading a .so into a C program, instead using perl? Or am i stuck having to either rewrite it in C or exec the perl program as a seperate executable (not desirable)?

Comment on including perl dynamically into C

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Re: including perl dynamically into C by mpeppler (Vicar) on Nov 05, 2002 at 16:36 UTC
It's certainly feasible to create a .so file that has an embedded perl interpreter, and load that .so file into your executable if it is needed. You need to read up on `dlopen()` (assuming that your system uses dlopen() for this - such as linux or solaris), and of course read the perlembed document. You can find out what link options to use by running `perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts` [download] Having said all that - is there any reason why you can't just link everything together? Michael	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: including perl dynamically into C by broquaint (Abbot) on Nov 05, 2002 at 16:37 UTC
Or you could the other way and embed `C` in `perl` with the marvellous `Inline::C`. Or back again and embed `perl` in `C` with another fantastical creation from Brian Ingerson `Inline::CPR`. HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply]