>>  <<  Usr  Pri  JfC  LJ  Phr  Dic  Rel  Voc  !:  Help  User

Calling J.DLL

The J DLL can be called by any program that can call DLLs.

Since J.DLL is itself used by the J session, you need to make a copy of J.DLL first before calling it from J; for example, copy it to file JJ.DLL.

File system\examples\data\jdll.h. gives C prototypes for J procedures.

Script system\examples\dll\jdll.ijs. gives examples of calling the J DLL from J.

Use procedure JDo to execute a sentence. For example, the following writes text abc to file t1.txt:

   load 'dll files'
   cmd=: '''abc'' 1!:2 <''t1.txt'''     NB. example sentence
   'jj.dll JDo i *c' cd <cmd            NB. send to J DLL
+-+--------------------+
|0|'abc' 1!:2 <'t1.txt'|
+-+--------------------+
fread 't1.txt'                          NB. check file was written
abc

Use procedure JGetM to retrieve a J variable. The cd right argument is a name, followed by 4 pointers, which will correspond to the result datatype, rank, pointer to shape, and pointer to values. For example:

   'jj.dll JDo i *c' cd <'ABC=: i.5'   NB. define ABC
+-+---------+
|0|ABC=: i.5|
+-+---------+

   'jj.dll JGetM i *c *i *i *i *i' cd 'ABC';4#<,0
+-+---+-+-+--------+--------+
|0|ABC|4|1|13496196|13496500|
+-+---+-+-+--------+--------+

The 6 items in the result are: error code (0=success), name, datatype (4=integer), rank(1), pointer to shape, and pointer to values.

The pointers refer to memory addresses within the J DLL. You should reference their values before calling the J DLL again, as further calls may invalidate the memory addresses. Use function memr to read memory and and ic to convert to J integers. For example, the shape is:

   _2 ic memr 13496196 0 4
5

Once the result datatype and shape are known, you can read the values, again using memr, and convert to a J variable.

File system\examples\dll\jdll.ijs defines functions that perform the necessary conversions. For example:

   load 'system\examples\dll\jdll.ijs'
   jdo 'ABC=: i.3 4'
+-+-----------+
|0|ABC=: i.3 4|
+-+-----------+

   jget 'ABC'
0 1  2  3
4 5  6  7
8 9 10 11

   jcmd 'q: 123456'
2 2 2 2 2 2 3 643

>>  <<  Usr  Pri  JfC  LJ  Phr  Dic  Rel  Voc  !:  Help  User