Re: shared memory access from within a Lua script..

[Gene Buckle <geneb@...>]

> >I am _very_ new to Lua (I'd never heard of it before today) and I find
> >myself needing to write a Lua script for a project I'm working on.
>
> Welcome!
>
Thanks!

> >I need to be able to move a fairly large amount of data from within a Lua
> >script to the "outside" world where I can deal with it using another
> >program.  The only way I know to do this is by constructing a shared
> >memory segment.
>
> If I understand you correctly, all you need to do is to export a C function
> to Lua that writes to the shared memory segment. You'll need to work in C
> to setup this shared memory segment. The C function exported to Lua would
> get a Lua string and an offset into the shared memory segment and simply
> copy the Lua string to that position. Note that Lua string can hold arbitrary
> binary data.
>

Yep, this pretty much sums up what I need to do.  Unfortunately, I suck at
C.  I have a fairly good handle on what code on the C end I need to call
to support the shared memory segment (CreateFileMapping() ,etc), but I
have zero clue as to how to accomplish this.  I don't even know if it's
possiblee to call the Win32 API from winthin a library that's not linked
to a "main()" of some kind.  This is one of those things where I basically
need a lot of hand holding. :(

I'd like to be able to use sockets as an either/or option, but since it's
not built into Lua by default, I can't guarantee that it'll be available
in the product I have to interface to.

Am I correct in assuming that it's possible to cast the Lua string into a
struct on the side?  Would I have to use a table for this instead?

Thanks!

g.