• novice2 (13/13) Jul 22 2007 Hello.
• Jarrett Billingsley (9/24) Jul 22 2007 Have a look at http://www.digitalmars.com/d/dll.html, especially the "DL...

novice2 <sorry noem.ail> writes:

Hello.

Sorry for dumb question.
I need to write dll (as plugin for app written on C). And i want to do it with
D instead of C.
Is it possible?
I can't imagine how garbage collect works, so i am afraid:
can i use D dinamic arrays?
can i use slicing?
can i return D char[] to outside from dll?
will GC work or i must care about memory myself?

Are there any advises or general recomendations about this?
(i already read http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BestPractices/DLL, and
it explain me about type system only)

If this already explained then give me link please.
Thanx

"Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:

"novice2" <sorry noem.ail> wrote in message 
news:f7v5gi$2rrr$1 digitalmars.com...
 Hello.

 Sorry for dumb question.
 I need to write dll (as plugin for app written on C). And i want to do it 
 with D instead of C.
 Is it possible?
 I can't imagine how garbage collect works, so i am afraid:
 can i use D dinamic arrays?
 can i use slicing?
 can i return D char[] to outside from dll?
 will GC work or i must care about memory myself?

 Are there any advises or general recomendations about this?
 (i already read http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BestPractices/DLL, 
 and it explain me about type system only)

 If this already explained then give me link please.
 Thanx

Have a look at http://www.digitalmars.com/d/dll.html, especially the "DLLs 
with a C interface" section and the "Memory Allocation" section.

Probably the most important point on that list is " Retain a pointer to the 
data within the D DLL so the GC will not free it."  Basically you can return 
a char[] to the other language so long as (1) you keep a reference to that 
data inside your DLL before returning it, and (2) the other code does not 
try to free()/delete that data.