Thanks again for the help, you're the only one who has given me sensible responses. Tonight I had an idea (don't know why I didn't think of it before), I searched the dmd directory for GetProcAddress, and to my surprise I found a sample file which gave an example. You were actually very close, the only thing that was off was the alias declaration, it should have been:

extern (C) alias void (*ptr)(/* args */);

This is not particularly clear from the documentation.

Herbert

In article <c76bn6$at5$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Eric Anderton says...
>
>>Thanks Eric, the new syntax works for me. The only issue now I have is specifying the calling convention, I need to specify cdecl. I'm currently getting an access violation which I assume is due to a bad calling mechanism.
>
>This is just a shot in the dark, but have you tried prefixing the handle
>definition with "extern(C)"?
>
>extern(C) function(int foo) bar; // maybe this will create the right call type?
>
>After looking over Walter's D documentation again, I think the "extern" statement gets double-duty when compared to C/C++.  Where in C we use "extern" to mean "declared later/elsewhere", D uses it for that as well as the calling convention.  Add to that the fact that DMD makes multiple passes on any given source file, and it really shifts the meaning more towards being a call-type declaration.
>
>Again, no D compiler in sight until I get home... so here goes nothing, right?
>
>- Eric
>
>from: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/htomodule.html
>
>__cdecl, __pascal, __stdcall
>
>int __cdecl x;
>int __cdecl foo(int a);
>int __pascal bar(int b);
>int __stdcall abc(int c);
>
>
>become:
>
>extern (C) int x;
>extern (C) int foo(int a);
>extern (Pascal) int bar(int b);
>extern (Windows) int abc(int c);
>
>
>

In article <c74emg$fe2$1@digitaldaemon.com>, snowflake says...
>
>I've read through the docs but I can't seem to work out how to declare a function that can to be loaded from a specific dll. The calling convention is cdecl. Is there a sort of equivalent loadlibrary() machanism? I tried to link the function via a lib file but the linker says "Error 43: Not a Valid Library File", even though the file is used by other apps on the computer.
>
>HMS
>
>

It seems that you want to link with a specific DLL in compile time, instead of run-time, right ? Ok, here it is:

DigitalMars has a tool named 'implib.exe' which is part of the DigitalMars C/C++ compiler package which takes a DLL as an argument and produces a .lib file which can be used with the DM linker.

For example, let's say you have

foo.dll

which contains the function

int foo(int)

You do the following steps:

1) execute:

implib foo.dll foo.lib

2) Link with foo.lib.

3) in your program, you must have:

extern(C) int foo(int);

4) use function 'foo' normally.

This is how I used the Allegro DLL with D.

>Thanks again for the help, you're the only one who has given me sensible responses.

You're quite welcome.  Anything to help a fellow developer.  Be sure to let us (the NG) know how the project pans out.

>Tonight I had an idea (don't know why I didn't think of it before), I searched the dmd directory for GetProcAddress, and to my surprise I found a sample file which gave an example.

So I'm not the only one sifting through Walter's code! ::chuckle::  Lately, I've taken to pulling apart Phobos to learn more about the platform.  IMO, this is the best way (at least for now) to learn how to do "undocumented" things with the D platform.

And as far as source goes, its a pretty good read. ;

- Eric