This is a beta preview of version 1.9.1 of the STLSoft libraries, incorporating a considerable number of changes from the 1.8.x versions. Notable new additions are STL-compatible adaptors for MFC CArrays, new iterator classes, and dl_call(): extremely powerful Dynamic Library Function invocation for UNIX and Windows.

There are lots of bug fixes, changes to the directory structures, enhanced
unit-tests, and so on. The new additions are:
- stlsoft::ostream_iterator, offering enhanced functionality over
std::ostream_iterator
- stlsoft::transform_iterator
- COMSTL stream functions
- MFCSTL CArray class and instance adaptors
- PlatformSTL environment_map
- WinSTL console functions

and, the most interesting, the introduction of:

- the dl_call() functions for the UNIXSTL and WinSTL libraries.

dl_call() allows dynamic library functions to be invoked in a natural, single-statement form. It is efficient, it supports between 0 and 32 parameters, it is exception-safe, it uses compile-time constraints to ensure that arguments are of POD types, it handles different calling conventions. A dynamic function is invoked by passing the library identifier, the function identifier and all the arguments that you would use to invoke the function if it was statically linked. For example, invoking the Win32 function EnumProcesses() by static linking would look like the following:

DWORD pids[100];
DWORD cbRetrieved;
BOOL bSuccess = ::EnumProcesses(&pids[0], sizeof(pids), &cbRetrieved);

EnumProcesses() has the stdcall calling convention, and resides in PSAPI.DLL. To invoke it dynamically, using dl_call(), would be as follows:

DWORD pids[100];
DWORD cbRetrieved;
BOOL bSuccess = winstl::dl_call("PSAPI", "stdcall:EnumProcesses", &pids[0],
sizeof(pids), &cbRetrieved);

or:

DWORD pids[100];
DWORD cbRetrieved;
HINSTANCE hinst = ::LoadLibrary("PSAPI.DLL");
BOOL bSuccess = winstl::dl_call(hinst, "stdcall:EnumProcesses", &pids[0],
sizeof(pids), &cbRetrieved);

It is flexible, since it allows the library identifier to be an HINSTANCE or any string type (e.g. char const*, std::string, etc.), and the function identifier to be any string type.

Download the all these goodies and more at http://stlsoft.org/downloads.html#stlsoft_1_9_1b1