| H2XS(1) | Perl Programmers Reference Guide | H2XS(1) |
h2xs - convert .h C header files to Perl extensions
h2xs [OPTIONS ...] [headerfile ... [extra_libraries]]
h2xs -h|-?|--help
h2xs builds a Perl extension from C header files. The extension will include functions which can be used to retrieve the value of any #define statement which was in the C header files.
The module_name will be used for the name of the extension. If module_name is not supplied then the name of the first header file will be used, with the first character capitalized.
If the extension might need extra libraries, they should be included here. The extension Makefile.PL will take care of checking whether the libraries actually exist and how they should be loaded. The extra libraries should be specified in the form -lm -lposix, etc, just as on the cc command line. By default, the Makefile.PL will search through the library path determined by Configure. That path can be augmented by including arguments of the form -L/another/library/path in the extra-libraries argument.
In spite of its name, h2xs may also be used to create a skeleton pure Perl module. See the -X option.
These methods all apply to the Ptr type for the structure; additionally two methods are constructed for the structure type itself, "_to_ptr" which returns a Ptr type pointing to the same structure, and a "new" method to construct and return a new structure, initialised to zeroes.
For versions < 5.6.0, the changes are.
- no use of 'our' (uses 'use vars' instead)
- no 'use warnings'
Specifying a compatibility version higher than the version of perl you are using to run h2xs will have no effect. If unspecified h2xs will default to compatibility with the version of perl you are using to run h2xs.
Since regular expression is optional, make sure that this switch is followed by at least one other switch if you omit regular expression and have some pending arguments such as header-file names. This is ok:
h2xs -e -n Module::Foo foo.h
This is not ok:
h2xs -n Module::Foo -e foo.h
In the latter, foo.h is taken as regular expression.
This may be useful since, say, types which are "typedef"-equivalent to integers may represent OS-related handles, and one may want to work with these handles in OO-way, as in "$handle->do_something()". Use "-o ." if you want to handle all the "typedef"ed types as opaque types.
The type-to-match is whitewashed (except for commas, which have no whitespace before them, and multiple "*" which have no whitespace between them).
Note that some types of arguments/return-values for functions may result in XSUB-declarations/typemap-entries which need hand-editing. Such may be objects which cannot be converted from/to a pointer (like "long long"), pointers to functions, or arrays. See also the section on "LIMITATIONS of -x".
# Default behavior, extension is Rusers
h2xs rpcsvc/rusers
# Same, but extension is RUSERS
h2xs -n RUSERS rpcsvc/rusers
# Extension is rpcsvc::rusers. Still finds <rpcsvc/rusers.h>
h2xs rpcsvc::rusers
# Extension is ONC::RPC. Still finds <rpcsvc/rusers.h>
h2xs -n ONC::RPC rpcsvc/rusers
# Without constant() or AUTOLOAD
h2xs -c rpcsvc/rusers
# Creates templates for an extension named RPC
h2xs -cfn RPC
# Extension is ONC::RPC.
h2xs -cfn ONC::RPC
# Extension is a pure Perl module with no XS code.
h2xs -X My::Module
# Extension is Lib::Foo which works at least with Perl5.005_03.
# Constants are created for all #defines and enums h2xs can find
# in foo.h.
h2xs -b 5.5.3 -n Lib::Foo foo.h
# Extension is Lib::Foo which works at least with Perl5.005_03.
# Constants are created for all #defines but only for enums
# whose names do not start with 'bar_'.
h2xs -b 5.5.3 -e '^bar_' -n Lib::Foo foo.h
# Makefile.PL will look for library -lrpc in
# additional directory /opt/net/lib
h2xs rpcsvc/rusers -L/opt/net/lib -lrpc
# Extension is DCE::rgynbase
# prefix "sec_rgy_" is dropped from perl function names
h2xs -n DCE::rgynbase -p sec_rgy_ dce/rgynbase
# Extension is DCE::rgynbase
# prefix "sec_rgy_" is dropped from perl function names
# subroutines are created for sec_rgy_wildcard_name and
# sec_rgy_wildcard_sid
h2xs -n DCE::rgynbase -p sec_rgy_ \
-s sec_rgy_wildcard_name,sec_rgy_wildcard_sid dce/rgynbase
# Make XS without defines in perl.h, but with function declarations
# visible from perl.h. Name of the extension is perl1.
# When scanning perl.h, define -DEXT=extern -DdEXT= -DINIT(x)=
# Extra backslashes below because the string is passed to shell.
# Note that a directory with perl header files would
# be added automatically to include path.
h2xs -xAn perl1 -F "-DEXT=extern -DdEXT= -DINIT\(x\)=" perl.h
# Same with function declaration in proto.h as visible from perl.h.
h2xs -xAn perl2 perl.h,proto.h
# Same but select only functions which match /^av_/
h2xs -M '^av_' -xAn perl2 perl.h,proto.h
# Same but treat SV* etc as "opaque" types
h2xs -o '^[S]V \*$' -M '^av_' -xAn perl2 perl.h,proto.h
Suppose that you have some C files implementing some functionality, and the corresponding header files. How to create an extension which makes this functionality accessible in Perl? The example below assumes that the header files are interface_simple.h and interface_hairy.h, and you want the perl module be named as "Ext::Ension". If you need some preprocessor directives and/or linking with external libraries, see the flags "-F", "-L" and "-l" in "OPTIONS".
h2xs -Afn Ext::Ension
The only purpose of this step is to create the needed directories, and let you know the names of these directories. From the output you can see that the directory for the extension is Ext/Ension.
h2xs -Oxan Ext::Ension interface_simple.h interface_hairy.h
h2xs looks for header files after changing to the extension directory, so it will find your header files OK.
cd Ext/Ension
perl Makefile.PL
make dist
make
make test
Do not forget to edit the documentation in the generated .pm file.
Consider the autogenerated files as skeletons only, you may invent better interfaces than what h2xs could guess.
Consider this section as a guideline only, some other options of h2xs may better suit your needs.
No environment variables are used.
Larry Wall and others
perl, perlxstut, ExtUtils::MakeMaker, and AutoLoader.
The usual warnings if it cannot read or write the files involved.
h2xs would not distinguish whether an argument to a C function which is of the form, say, "int *", is an input, output, or input/output parameter. In particular, argument declarations of the form
int
foo(n)
int *n
should be better rewritten as
int
foo(n)
int &n
if "n" is an input parameter.
Additionally, h2xs has no facilities to intuit that a function
int
foo(addr,l)
char *addr
int l
takes a pair of address and length of data at this address, so it is better to rewrite this function as
int
foo(sv)
SV *addr
PREINIT:
STRLEN len;
char *s;
CODE:
s = SvPV(sv,len);
RETVAL = foo(s, len);
OUTPUT:
RETVAL
or alternately
static int
my_foo(SV *sv)
{
STRLEN len;
char *s = SvPV(sv,len);
return foo(s, len);
}
MODULE = foo PACKAGE = foo PREFIX = my_
int
foo(sv)
SV *sv
See perlxs and perlxstut for additional details.
| 2023-11-25 | perl v5.32.1 |