1 This directory contains the source code of the pidl (Perl IDL)
4 pidl.pl is the main file of pidl.
6 Pidl works by building a parse tree from a .pidl file (a simple
7 dump of it's internal parse tree) or a .idl file
8 (a file format mostly like the IDL file format midl uses).
9 The IDL file parser is in idl.yp (a yacc file converted to
12 After a parse tree is present, pidl will call one of it's backends
13 (which one depends on the options given on the command-line). Here is
14 a list of current backends:
16 client.pm - Generates client call functions in C
17 dump.pm - Converts the parse tree back to an IDL file
18 eparser.pm - Generates a parser for the ethereal network sniffer
19 header.pm - Generates a header file with structures
20 parser.pm - Generates pull/push functions for parsing
21 server.pm - Generates server side implementation in C
22 template.pm - Generates stubs in C for server implementation
23 validator.pm - Validates the parse tree
24 proxy.pm - Generates proxy object for DCOM (client-side)
25 stub.pm - Generates stub call handler for DCOM (server-side)
27 Other files in this directory are:
28 tables.pl - Generates a table of available interfaces from a list of IDL files
29 util.pm - Misc utility functions used by *.pm and pidl.pl
31 Tips for hacking on pidl:
32 - Look at the pidl's parse tree by using the --keep option and looking
33 at the generated .pidl file.
34 - The various backends have a lot in common, if you don't understand how one
35 implements something, look at the others
36 - See pidl(1) and the documentation on midl
37 - See 'info bison' and yapp(1) for information on the file format of idl.yp