[Haskell-cafe] Why am I not allowed to use CStringLen inforeignexport?

[Brian Hulley]

Andreas Marth wrote:
> Thanks a lot for this information it helped a lot.

Glad to be of help.

> I am thinking about creating a wikipage about Haskell<->VBA
> interfacing through a DLL.
> Is it okay for you if I put your code there?

Yes.

> I am a bit concerned about the memory. newArray states that the
> memory has to be freed after usage. Is this needed here? How can it
> be done?

One way could be to write a function which creates the BSTR, passes it to a 
function, then deallocates the BSTR before returning eg (untested):

    import Control.Exception (bracket)

    withBSTR8 :: [Char] -> (BSTR8 -> IO a) -> IO a
    withBSTR8 s f =
        bracket
            (createBSTR8 s)
            (\bstr -> free (bstr `plusPtr` (-4)))
            (\bstr -> f bstr)

Regards, Brian.
-- 
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.

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