Squirrel (programming language)

Squirrel is a high level imperative/OO programming language, designed to be a light-weight scripting language that fits in the size, memory bandwidth, and real-time requirements of applications like video games. MirthKit, a simple toolkit for making and distributing open source, cross-platform 2D games, uses Squirrel for its platform for its good combination of familiar syntax, strong embedding support, and a compact but very useful standard library. [ [http://devs.mirthkit.com MirthKit Developer Wiki] ]

Language features

*Dynamic typing
*Delegation
*Classes & inheritance
*Higher order functions
*Generators
*Cooperative threads (coroutines)
*Tail recursion
*Exception handling
*Automatic memory management (primarily reference counting with backup garbage collector)
*Weak references
*Both compiler and virtual machine fit together in about 6k lines of C++ code.
*Optional 16-bit characters strings

yntax

Squirrel uses a C-like syntax

Factorial in Squirrel:

function factorial(x) { if (x = 0) { return 1; } else { return x * factorial(x-1); } } Random numbers using generators: function gen_random(max) { local last=42 local IM = 139968; local IA = 3877; local IC = 29573; for(;;) { //loops forever yield (max * (last = (last * IA + IC) % IM) / IM); } } local randtor = gen_random(100); for(local i = 0; i < 10; i += 1) print(">"+resume randtor+" ");

Classes and inheritance:

class BaseVector { constructor(...) { if(vargc >= 3) { x = vargv [0] ; y = vargv [1] ; z = vargv [2] ; } } x = 0; y = 0; z = 0; } class Vector3 extends BaseVector { function _add(other) { if(other instanceof this.getclass()) return ::Vector3(x+other.x,y+other.y,z+other.z); else throw "wrong parameter"; } function Print() { ::print(x+","+y+","+z+" "); } } local v0 = Vector3(1,2,3) local v1 = Vector3(11,12,13) local v2 = v0 + v1; v2.Print();

History

The language was made public in 2003 under the zlib/libpng license. It is developed and maintained by Alberto Demichelis.

ee also

*Lua
*Python
*Ruby

References

External links

* [http://www.squirrel-lang.org/ Squirrel Home Page]
* [http://wiki.squirrel-lang.org/ SquirrelWiki]
* [http://www.mirthkit.com/ MirthKit Home Page]