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Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2023 22:12:29 -0700
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Hanz <zaunere@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] FFI [was: Breakages with rc1]
From: dusk@woofle.net (Dusk)

On Sep 6, 2023, at 19:18, Hanz <zaunere@gmail.com> wrote:
> On a totally different note... I'm trying to get my head around FFI
> <https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ffi.php> specifically how it could =
be
> used to orchestrate 3rd party pipelines, like those of python.

That isn't a particularly good use case for FFI. If you're trying to =
call Python scripts, you're probably looking for popen(), proc_open(), =
or something like the Symfony Process component (composer require =
symfony/process).

FFI allows PHP scripts to load and call functions in C libraries. This =
can allow PHP scripts to access functionality which doesn't have PHP =
wrappers available.

If you're on macOS, here's a silly but functional example which calls =
the NSBeep() function to make your computer beep:

    $ffi =3D FFI::cdef(<<<'EOF'
        void NSBeep(void);
    EOF, "@rpath/AppKit.framework/AppKit");
    $ffi->NSBeep();
    sleep(1);

(Don't worry too much about the @rpath bit.)=