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From: Praetorian <ashish.sadanandan@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Last drop in a user's patience
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:39:43 -0800 (PST)
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On Nov 16, 9:23=A0pm, "Steven Lord" <sl...@mathworks.com> wrote:
> "Praetorian" <ashish.sadanan...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:d1e62298-ffa0-446d-bd51-78932c271033@z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> *snip*
>
> > That being said, it is still very silly of TMW to issue that warning
> > over a file naming convention! I'm still using R2007b but it'd be very
> > annoying if I started seeing that warning every time I tried to load a
> > dll in a future version. Wonder if it does that even for dlls that do
> > not export the mexFunction interface i.e. dlls that are not mex files?
>
> As far as I know, you can't directly invoke DLLs (or files with a MEXEXT
> extension) at the command prompt unless they have the mexFunction interfa=
ce.
> I'm not sure if the generic shared library interface (LOADLIBRARY) only
> accepts those libraries with the appropriate platform-specific shared
> library extension or if you can specify a different extension.
>
> --
> Steve Lord
> sl...@mathworks.com

Steve,
You're right, only DLLs exporting the mexFunction interface can be
called from the Matlab command line; and I've never tried calling a
DLL with a different extension using LoadLibrary but I'm willing to
bet that it'll work. I'm sure DLLs have other ways of identifying
themselves and the functions that they export than by just the
extension.

This is exactly what makes this decision by the Mathworks to generate
the warning so bewildering. Matlab can never ever completely stop
supporting the DLL extension in a Windows environment. Matlab loads
several standard Windows DLLs (from the system32 directory for
instance) when it wakes up. Is the Mathworks going to insist that
Microsoft change their naming convention too match their own?

I have no doubt that the Mathworks takes backwards compatibility
seriously but this particular decision seems to have been rather
narrow minded; or maybe we're just not seeing the purpose behind this.
Simply stating that Matlab will stop supporting DLLs in a future
version only manages to annoy your users. And what about 3rd party
toolbox vendors? I know of at least one such vendor that goes through
a lot of trouble to still support Matlab6p5p1. 6p5p1 probably won't
recognize mexw32 files it sees on the path.

Sometimes there is no option but to stop supporting certain things as
you keep updating your product but that is justified only when doing
so provides great advantages to your users. In this case, just
insisting that everyone change their file name extensions, isn't
providing anyone with any advantage, these files are still DLLs,
whether you call them .mexw32 or .monkey!

Ashish.