That's a good idea. It would have the downside that you'd have to flag the other process when you're done writing, and I think you'd have some headaches there. You'd probably have to introduce a waiting period - like, sleep for a second, check for file, read it, write out results, etc. Those seconds can add up.

Fortunately, I finally sat down in front of Excel and here's what I whipped up. It actually works, which stunned me.

First, in your VBA project, go to Tools->References, find 'Windows Script Host Model', and check the box.

Next add this VBA code, or something like it:

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.p
+l ")
  Set perlIn = perlProc.StdIn
  Set perlOut = perlProc.StdOut
End Sub

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

This handles starting and stopping the wordnet-ipc script, which can basically be as above. You should see a DOS box appear when you open the worksheet, if it's working right.

You could add a sub to restart the perl process if it dies.

Next step is to hook in your functions in VBA....

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 outpu
+t 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
[download]

That should do the trick. I haven't tried it with WordNet, as I don't have it installed on my windows box, but I did write a simple Perl print-execute-wait loop, and it worked fine.

best of luck! --Clinton