Overview

The Alore C API can be used to implement modules accessible to Alore programs in C or C++. By implementing modules in C you can access existing C libraries. This is the most common reason for using C modules, but a C module can also be used to improve the execution speed of many operations compared to a pure Alore implementation.

The Alore C API allows doing essentially everything that is possible in Alore code. You could also do many things that have no direct equivalents in Alore, but some of these are disallowed and are only a result of the less strict error checking performed by the C API.

You should, however, be aware the following issues before beginning to write a module in C:

• Implementing the same functionality in Alore C API typically requires much more work than writing similar functionality in Alore. Of course, sometimes it is not possible to implement some piece of code using only Alore code. In a case like that, you should consider writing the simplest possible C extension module and an Alore wrapper module that provides a simplified or higher level interface to the C module, and implementing all the functionality that is not strictly required to be implemented in C in Alore.
• C modules have less protection from programming errors. They can easily leak memory, cause memory corruption or break Alore language semantics, if not used with care.
• C modules typically have to be compiled separately for each supported platform. In addition, writing portable C code can be difficult.
• Besides requiring more work, writing C extension modules is usually simply much more difficult than writing comparable Alore code. To do anything non-trivial, you need to have pretty good C skills and be very careful.
• Some things might be slower in C than in Alore code, for example performing Alore arithmetic operations. Try to do as much as possible using standard low-level C operations, since Alore C API functions might be slow.

In a nutshell, always consider if Alore code might be good enough: write it in Alore unless there is a very compelling reason to do otherwise.