From: Patrick Hurley <phurley@...>
Date: 2005-12-20T23:56:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Very new to Ruby--needs help

On 12/20/05, Beginner <smankan@ueidaq.com> wrote:
> I am not able to load even .dll, this is what I did:
>
> require "C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\abc.dll"

Is abc.dll the dll associated with power32.lib? Or just an example. I
am unfamiliar (as is at least a cursory Google :-) with this
particular library. Without a specific API document, I doubt we can
provide you with the level of detail you will need at this stage in
your programming career.

From a high level there are two ways normally used to access external
libraries from within Ruby:

1. Create an extension -- this requires a certain amount of C
programming either by hand or using something like SWIG.

2. Or using DL (http://ttsky.net/ruby/ruby-dl.html)

If you can provide a specific API for the library you may get some
additional help (even more so if the library in question is free/open
source).

Good Luck