external C program

[E2]

Howdy, I'm want to write some tree intensive functions and I noticed
that octave is strictly call by value.  I figure this means I'll
have to do some absurd things to work on my trees if I choose to do
it directly in octave.  The next thing that comes to mind is to use
a C program to handle all of the tree work.  But I also need to save
the internal state of the C program to avoid passing a huge tree
structure back and fourth or parsing and re-parsing a file.  My friends
tell me that I should use a socket for IPC, so the C program can keep
running.  I plan on using a C++ wrapper .oct file thingy to forward
octave I/O to the socket, or I think I heard something about a socket
acting like a file (in which case I'd use regular file I/0 to send
octave generated requests to the C program).  So anyway, I'm beginning
to wonder if I'm going around my ass to scratch my elbow.  Has anyone
done something like this before or know the best way?

Thanks-a-million in advance!

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