ffi_call - Invoke a foreign function.
#include <ffi.h> void ffi_call(ffi_cif *cif, void (*fn)(void), void *rvalue, void **avalue);
ffi_call(3) BSD Library Functions Manual ffi_call(3)
NAME
ffi_call -- Invoke a foreign function.
SYNOPSIS
#include <ffi.h>
void
ffi_call(ffi_cif *cif, void (*fn)(void), void *rvalue, void **avalue);
DESCRIPTION
The ffi_call function provides a simple mechanism for invoking a function
without requiring knowledge of the function's interface at compile time.
fn is called with the values retrieved from the pointers in the avalue
array. The return value from fn is placed in storage pointed to by
rvalue. cif contains information describing the data types, sizes and
alignments of the arguments to and return value from fn, and must be ini-
tialized with ffi_prep_cif before it is used with ffi_call.
rvalue must point to storage that is sizeof(ffi_arg) or larger for non-
floating point types. For smaller-sized return value types, the ffi_arg
or ffi_sarg integral type must be used to hold the return value.
EXAMPLES
#include <ffi.h>
#include <stdio.h>
unsigned char
foo(unsigned int, float);
int
main(int argc, const char **argv)
{
ffi_cif cif;
ffi_type *arg_types[2];
void *arg_values[2];
ffi_status status;
// Because the return value from foo() is smaller than sizeof(long), it
// must be passed as ffi_arg or ffi_sarg.
ffi_arg result;
// Specify the data type of each argument. Available types are defined
// in <ffi/ffi.h>.
arg_types[0] = &ffi_type_uint;
arg_types[1] = &ffi_type_float;
// Prepare the ffi_cif structure.
if ((status = ffi_prep_cif(&cif, FFI_DEFAULT_ABI,
2, &ffi_type_uint8, arg_types)) != FFI_OK)
{
// Handle the ffi_status error.
}
// Specify the values of each argument.
unsigned int arg1 = 42;
float arg2 = 5.1;
arg_values[0] = &arg1;
arg_values[1] = &arg2;
// Invoke the function.
ffi_call(&cif, FFI_FN(foo), &result, arg_values);
// The ffi_arg 'result' now contains the unsigned char returned from foo(),
// which can be accessed by a typecast.
printf("result is %hhu", (unsigned char)result);
return 0;
}
// The target function.
unsigned char
foo(unsigned int x, float y)
{
unsigned char result = x - y;
return result;
}
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | library/libffi |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
ffi(3), ffi_prep_cif(3)
NOTES
Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can be
found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-code-
downloads.html.
This software was built from source available at https://github.com/ora-
cle/solaris-userland. The original community source was downloaded from
ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/libffi/libffi-3.2.1.tar.gz.
Further information about this software can be found on the open source
community website at http://sourceware.org/libffi/.
February 15, 2008