(question) Loading/unloading C functions at runtime

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>

| Do you know any C application where you load and unload C functions
| at runtime?  The only thing that comes to my mind is Bash shell, where
| you can load/unload builtin functions (within *.so file) written by user.
| I'm interested in looking at other applications and see how they do it.

Anything called a "plugin" is likely an example.  Browsers do this.

The dynamic loader supports this kind of thing (i.e. *.so files).  I
don't know if unloading is supported.

Think of Linux kernel modules.

Other hacks are possible but are a lot of work and are fragile.
Various things are using LLVM to generate on-the-fly code.  Think of
GIT compiling.

The low performance way is to run a sub-process (eg. the system(3) 
function).