1.2.2 Defining a FLI function

This next step uses the define-foreign-function macro to define a FLI function, or interface function, to be used to call the GetCursorPos function. An interface function takes its arguments, converts them into a C format, calls the foreign function, receives the return values, and converts them into a suitable Lisp format.

(fli:define-foreign-function (get-cursor-position "GetCursorPos")

  ((lp-point lppoint))

  :result-type bool)

In this example, the defined FLI function is get-cursor-position . It takes as its argument a pointer of type lppoint , converts this to a C format, and calls GetCursorPos . It takes the return value it receives from GetCursorPos and converts it into the FLI bool type we defined earlier.

We have now defined all the types and functions required to get the cursor position. The next step is to allocate memory for an instance of the tagPOINT structure using allocate-foreign-object. The following line of code binds location to a pointer that points to such an instance.

Finally, we can use our interface function get-cursor-position to get the cursor position:

LispWorks Foreign Language Interface User Guide and Reference Manual - 7 Dec 2011