Is there any way to pass Ruby objects to a C++ application ? I have never done that kind of thing before and was wondering if that would be possible. Would it require to modify the Ruby core code ?
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When Ruby gets too slow, I think it is being extended with C.Hamish Grubijan– Hamish Grubijan2010-01-13 01:36:43 +00:00Commented Jan 13, 2010 at 1:36
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4 Answers
Yes, and no, respectively.
Ruby is written in C. C++ is, by design, C-compatible.
All objects in Ruby are held by a VALUE object (which is a union type), which can be passed around quite easily.
Any directions you find for extending Ruby with C apply in C++ with little modification. Alternatively, you can use something like SWIG to simplify writing your extensions.
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Extending Ruby with C++ is not a problem. Basically the only thing you need to remember when writing your extension is to declare an init method of your extension as extern "C", like so:
extern "C" void Init_your_extension() { // ... }
I recently had to expose a C++ function to my ruby code, you can find the code here if you want (its just basic stuff, so I think it will be good to get you started): http://github.com/psyho/aspell_edit_dist
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The Programming Ruby book has some details on accessing Ruby from C. I am not sure how current the documentation is though. This blog post describes the Ruby C API as well.
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You can build Ruby extensions in C++ using Rice, take a look at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-extendruby/
