Anonymous user
User talk:Zmi007: Difference between revisions
m
→Call a foreign-language function
Line 136:
''Foreign function interface, or FFI, is a common name for a facility in a programming language (especially a high-level one that does not usually work in terms of pointers, raw structure layout, etc.) to invoke functions and access data structures defined using another one (especially C).''
Calling C from Fortran
Second point, you write that you should write a C wrapper. But C has no standard way to call another language. If you can do it with standard C, then you will be able to do it with Fortran and ISO_C_BINDING and if you need nonstandard C features, then the Fortran vendor may provide the same nonstandard
There are other cases for which one must use nonstandard features. Another example is calling a function that needs arguments with a special memory alignment. Intel has "DEC$ ATTRIBUTES ALIGN" for this. Even in
Notice that even before ISO_C_BINDING, Fortran compiler vendors used to provide some way to interface with C. There are DEC extensions, for instance. Incidentally, Intel still uses these extensions instead of the new standard bindings, for interface modules to the Windows API. I guess it's so that older programs don't break. It's also often easier to use integer variables holding pointers, than the c_f_pointer and c_f_procpointer subroutines.
On the other hand, there are languages for which a wrapper is mandatory. An example is VBA, in 32 bit applications. Since VBA can only call STDCALL functions, a CDECL function can't be called without a wrapper (which may be written in C, Pascal or Fortran for instance). In 64 bits applications, this not a problem anymore, since there is only one calling convention.
[[User:Arbautjc|Arbautjc]] ([[User talk:Arbautjc|talk]]) 18:27, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
| |||