Any good tutorials or literature on developing Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) to work with Metatrader? - page 2

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phy:

Do you have a C compiler?

I'm not entirely certain that Calpurnia is yet in a position where he/she really knows what a "C compiler" is.


phy:

Can you unerstand the sample and modify it?

Frankly, if you can understand the sample and modify it then I can't think why you'd ask Calpurnia's original question. I'm not sure what purpose the DLL in the samples directory is meant to achieve:


  • If you don't know C, then the example is going to be meaningless.
  • If you do know C, but not on a Windows platform, then it's not going to provide much help in understanding the vagaries of Windows DLLs, and there's nothing in the code comments to help you.
  • If you do know C, and you are used to Windows development, then the sample basically confirms that there are no strange quirks in calling DLLs from MT4. It also happens to illustrate the niche-case of how to handle MT4 string arrays.


In other words, the sample basically seems to exist as a quick sanity-check confirmation for people who already know how to write DLLs. (Incidentally, I'll give a free licence for the MTI Desktop software to anyone who can give a good reason why the example code bothers to do "#define MT4_EXPFUNC __declspec(dllexport)". This strikes me as pointless obfuscation, putting one more obstacle in the way of beginners.)


Calpurnia wrote >>

Now, how can I use this dll to learn?

Personally, my answer would be "...by starting from an entirely different point". But, as I've said above, I'm afraid that I can't give a good recommendation as to what that point should be. It partly depends on why you want to learn about DLLs - i.e. which of the advantages on my list above is of interest.


 
I guess that settles it..
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