dlibrary#

Purpose#

Dynamically links and unlinks shared libraries.

Format#

dlibrary [-a] [-d] [lib1 [lib2]]...

Parameters:

lib1 (literal) –
the base name of the library or the pathed name of the library. dlibrary takes two types of arguments, ‘’base’’ names and file names.
- Arguments without any “/” path separators are assumed to be library base names, and are expanded by adding the suffix .so, .dll or .dylib, depending on the platform. They are searched for in the default dynamic library directory.
- Arguments that include “/” path separators are assumed to be file names, and are not expanded. Relatively pathed file names are assumed to be specified relative to the current working directory, not relative to the dynamic library directory.
-a – append flag. the shared libraries listed are added to the current set of shared libraries rather than replacing them. For search purposes, the new shared libraries follow the already active ones. Without the -a flag, any previously linked libraries are dumped.
-d – dump flag. ALL shared libraries are unlinked and the functions they contain are no longer available to your programs. If you use dllcall to call one of your functions after executing a dlibrary -d your program will terminate with an error.

Examples#

Loading a shared library and unloading previously loaded shared libraries#

dlibrary mylib;

The above command passes the base name of the shared library to load. GAUSS will expand this base name to a platform specific shared library name. The expanded name on Windows is mylib.dll. On Linux it is libmylib.so and on Mac, libmylib.dylib. Since we did not pass the -a flag, GAUSS, will unload any shared libraries that were previously loaded with the dlibrary command.

Loading a shared library and keeping previously loaded shared libraries#

dlibrary -a mylib;

Since we passed the -a flag, GAUSS will not unload any libraries when it loads mylib.

Remarks#

If no flags are used, the shared libraries listed are linked into GAUSS and any previously linked libraries are dumped. When you call dllcall, the shared libraries will be searched in the order listed for the specified function. The first instance of the function found will be called.
dlibrary with no arguments prints out a list of the currently linked shared libraries. The order in which they are listed is the order in which they are searched for functions.
dlibrary recognizes a default directory in which to look for dynamic libraries. You can specify this by setting the variable dlib_path in gauss.cfg. Set it to point to a single directory, not a sequence of directories. sysstate, case 24, may also be used to get and set this default.
GAUSS maintains its own shared libraries which are listed when you execute dlibrary with no arguments, and searched when you call dllcall. The default shared library or libraries are searched last. You can force them to be searched earlier by listing them explicitly in a dlibrary statement. They are always active and are not unlinked when you execute
```
dlibrary -d
```

For more information, see Foreign Language Interface.