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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2000</year><year>2013</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>NIFs</title>
<prepared></prepared>
<docno></docno>
<date></date>
<rev></rev>
<file>nif.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This is an example of how to solve the <seealso marker="example">example problem</seealso>
by using NIFs. NIFs were introduced in R13B03 as an experimental
feature. It is a simpler and more efficient way of calling C-code
than using port drivers. NIFs are most suitable for synchronous functions like
<c>foo</c> and <c>bar</c> in the example, that does some
relatively short calculations without side effects and return the result.</p>
<section>
<title>NIFs</title>
<p>A NIF (Native Implemented Function) is a function that is
implemented in C instead of Erlang. NIFs appear as any other functions to
the callers. They belong to a module and are called like any other Erlang
functions. The NIFs of a module are compiled and linked into a dynamic
loadable shared library (SO in Unix, DLL in Windows). The NIF library must
be loaded in runtime by the Erlang code of the module.</p>
<p>Since a NIF library is dynamically linked into the emulator
process, this is the fastest way of calling C-code from Erlang (alongside
port drivers). Calling NIFs requires no context switches. But it is also
the least safe, because a crash in a NIF will bring the emulator down
too.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Erlang Program</title>
<p>Even if all functions of a module will be NIFs, you still need an Erlang
module for two reasons. First, the NIF library must be explicitly loaded
by Erlang code in the same module. Second, all NIFs of a module must have
an Erlang implementation as well. Normally these are minimal stub
implementations that throw an exception. But it can also be used as
fallback implementations for functions that do not have native
implemenations on some architectures.</p>
<p>NIF libraries are loaded by calling <c>erlang:load_nif/2</c>, with the
name of the shared library as argument. The second argument can be any
term that will be passed on to the library and used for
initialization.</p>
<codeinclude file="complex6.erl" tag="" type="none"></codeinclude>
<p>We use the directive <c>on_load</c> to get function <c>init</c> to be
automatically called when the module is loaded. If <c>init</c>
returns anything other than <c>ok</c>, such when the loading of
the NIF library fails in this example, the module will be
unloaded and calls to functions within it will fail.</p>
<p>Loading the NIF library will override the stub implementations
and cause calls to <c>foo</c> and <c>bar</c> to be dispatched to
the NIF implementations instead.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>NIF library code</title>
<p>The NIFs of the module are compiled and linked into a
shared library. Each NIF is implemented as a normal C function. The macro
<c>ERL_NIF_INIT</c> together with an array of structures defines the names,
arity and function pointers of all the NIFs in the module. The header
file <c>erl_nif.h</c> must be included. Since the library is a shared
module, not a program, no main function should be present.</p>
<p>The function arguments passed to a NIF appears in an array <c>argv</c>,
with <c>argc</c> as the length of the array and thus the arity of the
function. The Nth argument of the function can be accessed as
<c>argv[N-1]</c>. NIFs also take an environment argument that
serves as an opaque handle that is needed to be passed on to
most API functions. The environment contains information about
the calling Erlang process.</p>
<codeinclude file="complex6_nif.c" tag="" type="none"></codeinclude>
<p>The first argument to <c>ERL_NIF_INIT</c> must be the name of the
Erlang module as a C-identifier. It will be stringified by the
macro. The second argument is the array of <c>ErlNifFunc</c>
structures containing name, arity and function pointer of
each NIF. The other arguments are pointers to callback functions
that can be used to initialize the library. We do not use them
in this simple example so we set them all to <c>NULL</c>.</p>
<p>Function arguments and return values are represented as values
of type <c>ERL_NIF_TERM</c>. We use functions like <c>enif_get_int</c>
and <c>enif_make_int</c> to convert between Erlang term and C-type.
If the function argument <c>argv[0]</c> is not an integer then
<c>enif_get_int</c> will return false, in which case we return
by throwing a <c>badarg</c>-exception with <c>enif_make_badarg</c>.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Running the Example</title>
<p>1. Compile the C code.</p>
<pre>
unix> <input>gcc -o complex6_nif.so -fpic -shared complex.c complex6_nif.c</input>
windows> <input>cl -LD -MD -Fe complex6_nif.dll complex.c complex6_nif.c</input></pre>
<p>2. Start Erlang and compile the Erlang code.</p>
<pre>
> <input>erl</input>
Erlang R13B04 (erts-5.7.5) [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [rq:4] [async-threads:0] [kernel-poll:false]
Eshell V5.7.5 (abort with ^G)
1> <input>c(complex6).</input>
{ok,complex6}</pre>
<p>3. Run the example.</p>
<pre>
3> <input>complex6:foo(3).</input>
4
4> <input>complex6:bar(5).</input>
10
5> <input>complex6:foo("not an integer").</input>
** exception error: bad argument
in function complex6:foo/1
called as comlpex6:foo("not an integer")
</pre>
</section>
</chapter>
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