The FFI and FFI::Library modules implement a foreign function interface for Perl, version 5.005_03 and above. (The modules almost certainly work with earlier versions of Perl, but I do not have access to such versions to test them).

The foreign function interface allows Perl code to directly call C functions exported from shared libraries (DLLs on Windows, .so files on Unix). It also allows a Perl subroutine to be packaged as a function which can be passed to an external C routine ("callbacks").

There are two modules in the package:

• FFI is a low-level interface, providing two functions, call() and callback(). The call() routine expects to be passed a "raw" function address, but the module provides no way of creating such an address. That is left to other modules.
• FFI::Library encapsulates the concept of a shared library. It offers functions to load a library (and to automatically unload it when it is no longer required), and to extract functions from the library, in a form suitable for calling from Perl.

See the file INSTALL for installation details.