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From: ted@bcsaic.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: CL standard for foreign function interface
Message-ID: <1890@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Aug-87 12:46:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: bcsaic.1890
Posted: Fri Aug 14 12:46:46 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Aug-87 07:38:19 EDT
References: <827@thumperbellcore.com>
Reply-To: ted@bcsaic.UUCP (Ted Jardine)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 29
Summary: A standard for foreign function interface is needed

In article <827@thumperbellcore.com> Mike A. Caplinger writes:
>Would a de facto standard for declaring interfaces to foreign functions in
>Common Lisp be appropriate?  That is, I want to call some C function from CL
>so I declare its arguments and return values, then link it in to my Lisp
>incrementally.  I've observed that Lucid, Franz, and Kyoto Common Lisp all
>provide this functionality (under Unix, anyway) and that many people use it,
>but that it's slightly different from CL to CL and so the code's all non-
>portable.  Does anybody else see this as a big problem?
>
>	Mike Caplinger, mike@bellcore.com

It has been my experience that an interface to procedureal languages such as
C, Fortran, and even Ada ( :-)) is needed more and more frequently.  The
reasons may vary in detail but most amount to a desire to avoid reinventing
the wheel in Lisp.  Systems that couple numeric and symbolic computation are
also appearing more frequently in problem solving tasks.  For these reasons
I think a standard for a foreign function interface would be very beneficial.
It would help to increase portability and therefor reduce the labor required
to build and maintain systems.  The hardest part, I believe, is to determine
a 'language' for implementing such an interface that would account for all
(or at least most) present procedural languages and possible new such
languages.  Perhaps we could build a knowledge-based system that would
create such an interface language!  (He says, smiling).

-- 
TJ {With Amazing Grace} The Piper
(aka Ted Jardine)  CFI-ASME/I
Usenet:  ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!ted
CSNet:   ted@boeing.com