Foreign Library Interface

We present an improved Foreign Function Interface (FFI) for R to call arbitary native functions without the need for C wrapper code. Further we discuss a dynamic linkage framework for binding standard C libraries to R across platforms using a universal type information format. The package rdyncall comprises the framework and an initial repository of cross-platform bindings for standard libraries such as (legacy and modern) OpenGL, the family of SDL libraries and Expat. The package enables system-level programming using the R language; sample applications are given in the article. We outline the underlying automation tool-chain that extracts cross-platform bindings from C headers, making the repository extendable and open for library developers.

Daniel Adler
2012-6-01

CRAN packages used

rdyncall, Rffi

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Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Adler, "Foreign Library Interface", The R Journal, 2012

BibTeX citation

@article{RJ-2012-004,
  author = {Adler, Daniel},
  title = {Foreign Library Interface},
  journal = {The R Journal},
  year = {2012},
  note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2012-004},
  doi = {10.32614/RJ-2012-004},
  volume = {4},
  issue = {1},
  issn = {2073-4859},
  pages = {30-40}
}