function name from text file?

Hi all,

What I want to do is the following: at a certain point in my program I want to execute a function. The name of this function is stored in a text file. Is it possible to read this text file and execute the read string as a function?

Thanks,

bropolwig

Which OS / Compiler ?

How big a set of functions are you talking about

What about the security implications of allowing any function to be called.

Do all the functions have the same prototype

Got any more details of what you're trying to do?

You can't really call a function by its name as the function names are discarded in the final executable (unless you leave the debug symbols in)... so I'd just use a if statement block to compare the string you've read from the file to a list of possible functions to call. This will work as long as the number of functions isn't very large, otherwise it will become tedious.

Code:

---


//pass the function name as a string
void run_function(std::string& fname)
{
if(fname == "myfunction")
myfunction();
//etc
}

---

Alternatively, you could use an initialized array with the list of possible function names and and a pointer to the function, then iterate through the list, comparing the string to the function name, and if it matches, call the function.

If you're talking about windows, you could:
1) Write a .dll with the desired entry points, presumably all functions conform to some interface, i.e. they have the same parameters.
2) Use LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress API calls to get a function pointer
3) Call the desired function. Your text file could even contain two values, 1) the .dll to use, 2) the entry point in the .dll to use.

OR,

You could explicitly create/implement some interface via COM, and then the COM object would have a version independent progid, which is a string, and you could use that to instantiate the object, which would provide access to a whole family of routines in that interface.

so if you can get a it to run a function from a txt , that means you could edit the function at run time by changing stuff in the txt to do somethign diferent correct?