cpp.jl — Calling C++ from Julia

Provides partial support for calling C++ library functions from Julia.

@cpp(ccall_expression)

Suppose you have a C++ shared library, libdemo, which contains a function timestwo:

int timestwo(int x) {
  return 2*x;
}

double timestwo(double x) {
  return 2*x;
}

You can use these functions by placing the @cpp macro prior to a ccall, for example:

mylib = dlopen("libdemo")
x = 3.5
x2 = @cpp ccall(dlsym(mylib, :timestwo), Float64, (Float64,), x)
y = 3
y2 = @cpp ccall(dlsym(mylib, :timestwo), Int, (Int,), y)

The macro performs C++ ABI name-mangling (using the types of the parameters) to determine the correct library symbol.

Like ccall, this performs library calls without overhead. However, currently it has a number of limitations:

• It does not support pure-header libraries
• The restrictions of ccall apply here; for example, there is no support for struct. Consequently it is not possible to use C++ objects.
• Currently there is no C++ namespace support
• Currently there is no support for templated functions
• Currently only g++ is supported

The latter three may not be difficult to fix.