The main reason I embed C (actually, XS) is where an interface is available to C but not to Perl. This is particularly the case with operating system APIs.
Sometimes Perl API wrappers are provided but might not offer the particular range of features needed, or be very awkward. For example, if I need to call a series of four or five APIs, passing values between them, it can be tedious and slow to convert values from C to Perl then back again (often using pack/unpack) - it makes sense to write all the calls in C and package it.

These needs are specialised: you may well find that you do not have that need or that someone else has boldly gone before, and you can download the package from CPAN.

In reply to Re: why embed C into Perl by cdarke
in thread why embed C into Perl by chuckd

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.