Alore C API Reference

Introduction

The Alore C API enables you to use the C programming language (and C++) to implement modules that can be accessed in Alore programs. C modules are often used to provide access to existing C libraries and APIs. They are also often more efficient than pure Alore implementations. The need for using C modules should always be carefully evaluated, since developing C code usually takes more effort than comparable Alore code, and the portability of compiled C modules to different operating systems is limited.

This document first presents some background information, explains in detail a few introductory examples and describes important basic concepts. The following sections contain a reference of macros and API functions. The final sections give an overview of some specific technical issues.

Note: There may be a major update to the Alore C API in the not too distant future that requires updating essentially all C modules. In particular, we may remove direct exceptions and only support "normal" exceptions, since the longjmp-based implementation that is used for direct exceptions has several problems.

Contents

• Overview
• Getting started
• Defining modules
  • Module basics
  • Defining functions
  • Defining global variables and constants
  • Defining classes
  • Defining interfaces
  • Storing binary data in instances
  • Variant macros
  • Private definitions
  • Mixing Alore and C in modules
• Coexisting with the garbage collector
• Exceptions
  • Normal exceptions
  • Direct exceptions
  • Raising exceptions
  • Propagating exceptions
  • Catching exceptions
  • Direct exceptions and freeing resources
  • Exception handling examples
• Common operations
  • Arithmetic operations
  • Comparison operations
  • Call operations
  • Member operations
  • Collection operations
  • Accessing global variables and definitions
  • Miscellaneous operations
• Type-specific operations
  • Int operations
  • Float operations
  • Str operations
  • Array operations
  • Tuple operations
  • Miscellaneous type-specific operations
• Low-level operations
  • Temporary locations
  • Instance binary data manipulation
  • Object construction
  • Memory management
  • Value containers
  • Thread support
  • Miscellaneous functions
• Using standard C libraries in modules
• Using C++ in modules
• Index