=head2 Evaluating a Perl statement from your C program
-One way to evaluate pieces of Perl code is to use
-L<perlguts/perl_eval_sv()>. We've wrapped this inside our own
-I<perl_eval()> function, which converts a command string to an SV,
-passing this and the L<perlcall/G_DISCARD> flag to
-L<perlguts/perl_eval_sv()>.
-
-Arguably, this is the only routine you'll ever need to execute
-snippets of Perl code from within your C program. Your string can be
+Perl provides two API functions to evaluate pieces of Perl code.
+These are L<perlguts/perl_eval_sv()> and L<perlguts/perl_eval_pv()>.
+
+Arguably, these are the only routines you'll ever need to execute
+snippets of Perl code from within your C program. Your code can be
as long as you wish; it can contain multiple statements; it can employ
L<perlfunc/use>, L<perlfunc/require> and L<perlfunc/do> to include
external Perl files.
-Our I<perl_eval()> lets us evaluate individual Perl strings, and then
+I<perl_eval_pv()> lets us evaluate individual Perl strings, and then
extract variables for coercion into C types. The following program,
I<string.c>, executes three Perl strings, extracting an C<int> from
the first, a C<float> from the second, and a C<char *> from the third.
#include <EXTERN.h>
#include <perl.h>
-
+
static PerlInterpreter *my_perl;
-
- I32 perl_eval(char *string)
- {
- return perl_eval_sv(newSVpv(string,0), G_DISCARD);
- }
-
+
main (int argc, char **argv, char **env)
{
- char *embedding[] = { "", "-e", "0" };
- STRLEN length;
-
- my_perl = perl_alloc();
- perl_construct( my_perl );
-
- perl_parse(my_perl, NULL, 3, embedding, NULL);
- perl_run(my_perl);
- /** Treat $a as an integer **/
- perl_eval("$a = 3; $a **= 2");
- printf("a = %d\n", SvIV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE)));
-
- /** Treat $a as a float **/
- perl_eval("$a = 3.14; $a **= 2");
- printf("a = %f\n", SvNV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE)));
-
- /** Treat $a as a string **/
- perl_eval("$a = 'rekcaH lreP rehtonA tsuJ'; $a = reverse($a); ");
- printf("a = %s\n", SvPV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE), length));
-
- perl_destruct(my_perl);
- perl_free(my_perl);
+ char *embedding[] = { "", "-e", "0" };
+
+ my_perl = perl_alloc();
+ perl_construct( my_perl );
+
+ perl_parse(my_perl, NULL, 3, embedding, NULL);
+ perl_run(my_perl);
+
+ /** Treat $a as an integer **/
+ perl_eval_pv("$a = 3; $a **= 2", TRUE);
+ printf("a = %d\n", SvIV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE)));
+
+ /** Treat $a as a float **/
+ perl_eval_pv("$a = 3.14; $a **= 2", TRUE);
+ printf("a = %f\n", SvNV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE)));
+
+ /** Treat $a as a string **/
+ perl_eval_pv("$a = 'rekcaH lreP rehtonA tsuJ'; $a = reverse($a);", TRUE);
+ printf("a = %s\n", SvPV(perl_get_sv("a", FALSE), na));
+
+ perl_destruct(my_perl);
+ perl_free(my_perl);
}
All of those strange functions with I<sv> in their names help convert Perl scalars to C types. They're described in L<perlguts>.
a = 9.859600
a = Just Another Perl Hacker
+In the example above, we've created a global variable to temporarily
+store the computed value of our eval'd expression. It is also
+possible and in most cases a better strategy to fetch the return value
+from L<perl_eval_pv> instead. Example:
+
+ ...
+ SV *val = perl_eval_pv("reverse 'rekcaH lreP rehtonA tsuJ'", TRUE);
+ printf("%s\n", SvPV(val,na));
+ ...
+
+This way, we avoid namespace pollution by not creating global
+variables and we've simplified our code as well.
=head2 Performing Perl pattern matches and substitutions from your C program
-Our I<perl_eval()> lets us evaluate strings of Perl code, so we can
+The I<perl_eval_pv()> function lets us evaluate strings of Perl code, so we can
define some functions that use it to "specialize" in matches and
substitutions: I<match()>, I<substitute()>, and I<matches()>.
#include <perl.h>
static PerlInterpreter *my_perl;
- I32 perl_eval(char *string)
- {
- return perl_eval_sv(newSVpv(string,0), G_DISCARD);
- }
+
/** match(string, pattern)
**
** Used for matches in a scalar context.
command = malloc(sizeof(char) * strlen(string) + strlen(pattern) + 37);
sprintf(command, "$string = '%s'; $return = $string =~ %s",
string, pattern);
- perl_eval(command);
+ perl_eval_pv(command, TRUE);
free(command);
return SvIV(perl_get_sv("return", FALSE));
}
command = malloc(sizeof(char) * strlen(*string) + strlen(pattern) + 35);
sprintf(command, "$string = '%s'; $ret = ($string =~ %s)",
*string, pattern);
- perl_eval(command);
+ perl_eval_pv(command, TRUE);
free(command);
*string = SvPV(perl_get_sv("string", FALSE), length);
return SvIV(perl_get_sv("ret", FALSE));
command = malloc(sizeof(char) * strlen(string) + strlen(pattern) + 38);
sprintf(command, "$string = '%s'; @array = ($string =~ %s)",
string, pattern);
- perl_eval(command);
+ perl_eval_pv(command, TRUE);
free(command);
array = perl_get_av("array", FALSE);
num_matches = av_len(array) + 1; /** assume $[ is 0 **/
Check out Doug's article on embedding in Volume 1, Issue 4 of The Perl
Journal. Info about TPJ is available from http://tpj.com.
-February 1, 1997
+April 14, 1997
Some of this material is excerpted from Jon Orwant's book: I<Perl 5
Interactive>, Waite Group Press, 1996 (ISBN 1-57169-064-6) and appears
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff