loadlib - dynamic library loading facilities for the Lua language.

Download it here (tar gzipped, 7474 bytes).

It was tested on AIX 3/4, Linux, IRIX 5, SunOS 4/5, Windows 95/NT.
It was not tested for HP-UX and Next.
The tar file includes the dlfcn emulation library for AIX written by Jens-Uwe Mager.

To use loadlib, call the initialization function void loadlib_open(void).

This function registers three Lua functions:

loadlib( libname, [dir] ) -> libhandle, [errormsg]

Loads a library. libname can be a full path to the library or just the library name. If it is a library name, dir can be used to specify the directory where the library is. The function returns a libhandle to be used with the functions unloadlib and callfromlib. If the library cannot be loaded, the function returns nil as the libhandle and a string describing the error.
Examples:
loadlib( "/usr/lib/libX11.so" )
loadlib( "c:\\lua\\poslua.dll" )
loadlib( "poslua" ): search for libposlua.so in unix or poslua.dll in windows, using the system default search path
loadlib( "poslua", "/lua/" ): search for /lua/libposlua.so in unix, /lua/poslib.dll in windows

unloadlib( libhandle )

Unload the library libhandle. libhandle must be an userdata returned by the function loadlib.
Warning: the Lua functions eventually registered by the library are not removed!

callfromlib( libhandle, functionname )

Call the function functionname from the library libhandle. libhandle must be an userdata returned by the function loadlib. functionname must be a string.
Typically, you use callfromlibonly once, after loadlib, to call an open function that will register the lib functions in the Lua environment.