Re: Accessing perl from VB...

Re: Accessing perl from VB...

[Danny Smith]

>From: John.Velman@HSC.com
>To: cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
>Subject: Accessing perl from VB...
>Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:51:21 -0700
>
>Question:  how hard
>would it be to get at the perl functions from VBA using  libperl5_6_0.dll?
>
Unless the dll exports are all _stdcall (aka PASCAL) convention, very 
difficult.  VBA can only import _stdcall functions.

Danny
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RE: Accessing perl from VB...

[Fifer, Eric]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1826 bytes --]

John.Velman wrote:
>Last spring I desparately needed to use Perl's regular expression
>capabilities in a VBA program that was doing transformations on
>a huge Excel file.   I found that the Active State perl has a perl dll
>(and directions for using it), so I installed the Active State perl.

I know of a few different ways to go at this, although this is a little
off topic for a Cygwin group.

+ ActiveState Perl (calling from VBA to Perl)
  + PerlEZ.dll: a simple DLL that can be loaded by VBA and
    creates a perl interpreter from which you can do most
    perl things (kinda buggy IMHO).
  + PerlCOM: exposes Perl as a COM object, from VBA you
    can do CreateObject, etc.
  + Microsoft ActiveX Scripting Control: a COM object that
    provides hooks into Microsoft's scripting engine which
    in turn can call into PerlScript as well as other languages.

+ Win32::OLE (calling from Perl to ActiveX)
  Allow calls from Perl into any ActiveX (aka COM, OLE) object like
  Excel.  Also, works well in combination with the above.

  The latest Win32-OLE-0.13 compiles relatively cleanly on Cygwin.
  Attached is a patch that works around a know gcc bug.  The
  Win32::OLE maintainer is aware of the problem, but since it is
  a gcc bug ...

How did you solve your problem?

>I'd just as soon de-install the Active State perl.  Question:  how hard
>would it be to get at the perl functions from VBA using  libperl5_6_0.dll?

I have some patches to Win32::OLE that basically takes the PerlEZ approach
of creating a DLL that can be loaded by VBA (only tested with Excel) and
has an embedded Perl interpreter.

After corresponding with Jan Dubois, the Win32::OLE maintainer, I've been
planning to clean it up and upload to CPAN.  If your interested, I can
try to do this sooner rather than later.

Regards,

Eric Fifer






[-- Attachment #2: Win32-OLE.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-diff, Size: 949 bytes --]

diff -ur Win32-OLE-0.13.orig/OLE.xs Win32-OLE-0.13/OLE.xs
--- Win32-OLE-0.13.orig/OLE.xs	Wed May 31 02:58:03 2000
+++ Win32-OLE-0.13/OLE.xs	Tue Jun 13 10:42:32 2000
@@ -172,13 +172,24 @@
 
     /* DCOM function addresses are resolved dynamically */
     HINSTANCE hOLE32;
+#if defined(__GNUC__)
+    HRESULT STDAPICALLTYPE (*pfnCoInitializeEx)(LPVOID, DWORD);
+    void STDAPICALLTYPE (*pfnCoUninitialize)(void);
+    HRESULT STDAPICALLTYPE (*pfnCoCreateInstanceEx)(REFCLSID, IUnknown*, DWORD, COSERVERINFO*, DWORD, MULTI_QI*);
+#else
     FNCOINITIALIZEEX     *pfnCoInitializeEx;
     FNCOUNINITIALIZE     *pfnCoUninitialize;
     FNCOCREATEINSTANCEEX *pfnCoCreateInstanceEx;
+#endif
 
     /* HTML Help Control loaded dynamically */
     HINSTANCE hHHCTRL;
+#if defined(__GNUC__)
+    HWND WINAPI (*pfnHtmlHelp)(HWND hwndCaller, LPCSTR pszFile,
+				 UINT uCommand, DWORD dwData);
+#else
     FNHTMLHELP *pfnHtmlHelp;
+#endif
 
 }   PERINTERP;
 

Accessing perl from VB...

[John.Velman]

Last spring I desparately needed to use Perl's regular expression
capabilities in a VBA program that was doing transformations on
a huge Excel file.   I found that the Active State perl has a perl dll
(and directions for using it), so I installed the Active State perl.

I've had a chance in the last few days, finally, to install cygwin  1.1
properly (apparently -- enscript compiled out of the box), and have
also installed Charles Wilson's perl_5.6.0.

I'd just as soon de-install the Active State perl.  Question:  how hard
would it be to get at the perl functions from VBA using  libperl5_6_0.dll?

I apologize if this is documented, but I can't seem to find it.

Thanks,

John Velman
john.velman@hsc.com


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