Chapter 8: Programming Perl in C

Chapter 8 - Programming Perl in C
by?Sam Tregar?
Apress ? 2002
Companion Web Site

Overview

THE NEXT THREE CHAPTERS teach a black art—programming Perl modules in C. To get the most out of these chapters you'll need to have some experience with the C programming language. You don't need to be a C guru, but you do need to know your pointers and macros. If you're worried that you don't know enough C, I suggest you buy a good C reference and give it a try. When you get stuck, hit the books—I think you'll find it happening less often than you expect.

This chapter presents an introduction to Perl's C API. Next, the XS system is presented in Chapter 10, I'll show you a shortcut—Inline::C. Inline::C is a brand new module that I predict will be used for the majority C modules in the future.

One thing this chapter won't do is explain how Perl works. This is fascinating material but largely unrelated to the task of writing Perl modules in C. For pointers to documentation on this and other related topics, see the "References" section at the end of the chapter.