This chapter describes the actual application programming interface (API) that is exposed to application code running in Fluke tasks. It is defined in terms of C function calls and definitions, although it can be accessed from other languages as well with appropriate glue.
The API is divided into two basic parts: the set of functions available to operate on active Fluke objects, and the data structures storing the state of inactive (pickled) Fluke objects. The processor-architecture-independent aspects of each of these are defined in the following two sections; following these descriptions are sections describing processor-specific details of the API, as well as processor-specific object types and enhancements.
Note that the C-language type names used in the function prototypes are the same as the type names of the corresponding pickled data structures. This is for convenience only; the rule still applies that (unless otherwise specified) the contents of these structures must not be accessed while an object is active.