From: ยทยทยท@cs.umass.edu
Subject: Calling symbolically oriented/functional languages from C
Date:
Message-ID: <15888@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Sean Cox writes:
> I'm currently working on a system that needs to be able to call LISP
> functions from a C program. The system will be running under UNIX, both
> SYSV and BSD, from "regular" UNIX C, possibly GCC. Any pointers to
> information about how to do this would be greatly appreciated. Most likely
> the system will use KCL, but that's not absolutley necessary.
-Sean Cox
POPLOG V14 will provide bi-directional calling between C and any of the
languages supported by the system (Common Lisp, ML, POP-11 Prolog). The
X-windows interface makes this necessary, since POPLOG has gone for a
C-based approach to X-windows, providing CLX as an option for LISPers.
Thus the C-code for X-windows is linked in using the external load capability
and calls Poplog VM procedures to handle events. I understand that this
capability is now running at Sussex, and may be pre-released to some UK
universities shortly to circumvent problems arising from the restructuring
of exception handling in SUN OS 4.1. in version 13.6 of POPLOG (these
afflict POP-11 users mostly).
POPLOG compiles all languages to native code for a variety of machines.
This code can be quite good (with closely matching code, I
measured running times of C + 50% for SUN/4) for the tak "benchmark")
Stephen Knight of HP Labs Bristol claims to outperform C routinely
in real applications (for real customers) by exploiting AI language
features.