S-Lang Library C Programmer's Guide (v2.2.4) John E. Davis Mar 28, 2011 ____________________________________________________________ 1. Preface S-Lang is an interpreted language that was designed from the start to be easily embedded into a program to provide it with a powerful extension language. Examples of programs that use S-Lang as an extension language include the jed text editor and the slrn newsreader. Although S-Lang does not exist as a separate application, it is distributed with a quite capable program called slsh (``slang- shell'') that embeds the interpreter and allows one to execute S-Lang scripts, or simply experiment with S-Lang at an interactive prompt. Many of the the examples in this document are presented in the context of one of the above applications. S-Lang is also a programmer's library that permits a programmer to develop sophisticated platform-independent software. In addition to providing the S-Lang interpreter, the library provides facilities for screen management, keymaps, low-level terminal I/O, etc. 1.1. A Brief History of S-Lang I first began working on S-Lang sometime during the fall of 1992. At that time I was writing a text editor (jed), which I wanted to endow with a macro language. It occurred to me that an application- independent language that could be embedded into the editor would prove more useful because I could envision embedding it into other programs. As a result, S-Lang was born. S-Lang was originally a stack language that supported a postscript- like syntax. For that reason, I named it S-Lang, where the S was supposed to emphasize its stack-based nature. About a year later, I began to work on a preparser that would allow one unfamiliar with stack based languages to make use of a more traditional infix syntax. Currently, the syntax of the language resembles C, nevertheless some postscript-like features still remain, e.g., the `%' character is still used as a comment delimiter. 1.2. Acknowledgements Since I first released S-Lang, I have received a lot feedback about the library and the language from many people. This has given me the opportunity and pleasure to interact with a number of people to make the library portable and easy to use. In particular, I would like to thank the following individuals: Luchesar Ionkov for his comments and criticisms of the syntax of the language. He was the person who made me realize that the low-level byte-code engine should be totally type-independent. He also improved the tokenizer and preparser and impressed upon me that the language needed a grammar. Mark Olesen for his many patches to various aspects of the library and his support on AIX. He also contributed a lot to the pre-processing (SLprep) routines. John Burnell for the OS/2 port of the video and keyboard routines. He also made value suggestions regarding the interpreter interface. Darrel Hankerson for cleaning up and unifying some of the code and the makefiles. Dominik Wujastyk who was always willing to test new releases of the library. Michael Elkins for his work on the curses emulation. Hunter Goatley, Andy Harper, Martin P.J. Zinser, and Jouk Jansen for their VMS support. Dave Sims and Chin Huang for Windows 95 and Windows NT support, and Dino Sangoi for the Windows DLL support. I am also grateful to many other people who send in bug-reports, bug- fixes, little enhancements, and suggestions, and so on. Without such community involvement, S-Lang would not be as well-tested and stable as it is. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for her support and understanding while I spent long weekend hours developing the library. 2. Introduction S-Lang is a C programmer's library that includes routines for the rapid development of sophisticated, user friendly, multi-platform applications. The S-Lang library includes the following: o Low level tty input routines for reading single characters at a time. o Keymap routines for defining keys and manipulating multiple keymaps. o A high-level keyprocessing interface (SLkp) for handling function and arrow keys. o High level screen management routines for manipulating both monochrome and color terminals. These routines are very efficient. (SLsmg) o Low level terminal-independent routines for manipulating the display of a terminal. (SLtt) o Routines for reading single line input with line editing and recall capabilities. (SLrline) o Searching functions: both ordinary searches and regular expression searches. (SLsearch) o An embedded stack-based language interpreter with a C-like syntax. The library is currently available for OS/2, MSDOS, Unix, and VMS systems. For the most part, the interface to library routines has been implemented in such a way that it appears to be platform independent from the point of view of the application. In addition, care has been taken to ensure that the routines are ``independent'' of one another as much as possible. For example, although the keymap routines require keyboard input, they are not tied to S-Lang's keyboard input routines--- one can use a different keyboard getkey routine if one desires. This also means that linking to only part of the S-Lang library does not pull the whole library into the application. Thus, S- Lang applications tend to be relatively small in comparison to programs that use libraries with similar capabilities. 3. Error Handling Many of the S-Lang functions return 0 upon success or -1 to signify failure. Other functions may return NULL to indicate failure. In addition, upon failure, many will set the error state of the library to a value that indicates the nature of the error. The value of this state may be queried via the SLang_get_error function. This function will return 0 to indicate that there is no error, or a non-zero value such as one of the following constants: SL_Any_Error SL_Index_Error SL_OS_Error SL_Parse_Error SL_Malloc_Error SL_Syntax_Error SL_IO_Error SL_DuplicateDefinition_Error SL_Write_Error SL_UndefinedName_Error SL_Read_Error SL_Usage_Error SL_Open_Error SL_Application_Error SL_RunTime_Error SL_Internal_Error SL_InvalidParm_Error SL_NotImplemented_Error SL_TypeMismatch_Error SL_LimitExceeded_Error SL_UserBreak_Error SL_Forbidden_Error SL_Stack_Error SL_Math_Error SL_StackOverflow_Error SL_DivideByZero_Error SL_StackUnderflow_Error SL_ArithOverflow_Error SL_ReadOnly_Error SL_ArithUnderflow_Error SL_VariableUninitialized_Error SL_Domain_Error SL_NumArgs_Error SL_Data_Error SL_Unknown_Error SL_Unicode_Error SL_Import_Error SL_InvalidUTF8_Error For example, if a function tries to allocate memory but fails, then SLang_get_error will return SL_Malloc_Error. If the application makes use of the interpreter, then it is important that application-specific functions called from the interpreter set the error state of the library in order for exception handling to work. This may be accomplished using the SLang_set_error function, e.g., if (NULL == (fp = fopen (file, "r"))) SLang_set_error (SL_Open_Error); Often it is desirable to give error message that contains more information about the error. The SLang_verror function may be used for this purpose: if (NULL == (fp = fopen (file, "r"))) SLang_verror (SL_Open_Error, "Failed to open %s: errno=%d", file, errno); By default, SLang_verror will write the error message to stderr. For applications that make use of the SLsmg routines it is probably better for the error message to be printed to a specific area of the display. The SLang_Error_Hook variable may be used to redirect error messages to an application defined function, e.g., static void write_error (char *err) { SLsmg_gotorc (0, 0); SLsmg_set_color (ERROR_COLOR); SLsmg_write_string (err); } int main (int argc, char **argv) { /* Redirect error messages to write_error */ SLang_Error_Hook = write_error; . . } Under extremely rare circumstances the library will call the C exit function causing the application to exit. This will happen if the SLtt_get_terminfo is called but the terminal is not sufficiently powerful. If this behavior is undesirable, then another function exists (SLtt_initialize) that returns an error code. The other times the library will exit are when the interpreter is called upon to do something but has not been properly initialized by the application. Such a condition is regarded as misuse of the libary and should be caught by routine testing of the application during development. In any case, when the library does call the exit function, it will call an application-defined exit hook specified by the SLang_Exit_Error_Hook variable: static int exit_error_hook (char *fmt, va_list ap) { fprintf (stderr, "Fatal Error. Reason:"); vfprintf (stderr, fmt, va_list); } int main (int argc, char **argv) { SLang_Exit_Error_Hook = exit_error_hook; . . } The idea is that the hook can be used to perform some cleanup, free resources, and other tasks that the application needs to do for a clean exit. 4. Unicode Support S-Lang has native support for the UTF-8 encoding of unicode in a number of its interfaces including the the SLsmg screen mangement interface as well as the interpreter. UTF-8 is a variable length multibyte encoding where unicode characters are represented by one to six bytes. A technical description of the UTF-encoding is beyond the scope of this document, and as such the reader is advised to look elsewhere for a more detailed specification of the encoding. By default, the library's handling of UTF-8 is turned off. It may be enabled by a call to the SLutf8_enable function: int SLutf8_enable (int mode) If the value of mode is 1, then the library will be put in UTF-8 mode. If the value of mode is 0, then the library will be initialized with UTF-8 support disabled. If the value is -1, then the mode will deter- mined through an OS-dependent manner, e.g., for Unix, the standard locale mechanism will be used. The return value of this function will be 1 if UTF-8 support was activated, or 0 if not. The above function determines the UTF-8 state of the library as a whole. For some purposes it may be desirable to have more fine-grained control of the UTF-8 support. For example, one might be using the jed editor to view a UTF-8 encoded file but the terminal associated with the editor may not support UTF-8. In such a case, one would want the SLsmg interface to be in UTF-8 mode but lower-level SLtt interface to not be in UTF-8 mode. Hence, the following activation functions are also provided: int SLsmg_utf8_enable (int mode); int SLtt_utf8_enable (int mode); int SLinterp_utf8_enable (int mode); Note that once one of these interface specific functions has been called, any further calls to the umbrella function SLutf8_enable will have no effect on that interface. For this reason, it is best to call SLutf8_enable first before the calling one of the interface-specific functions. Until support for Unicode is more widespread among users, it is expected that most users will still be using a national character set such as ASCII or iso-8869-1. For example, iso-8869-1 is a very widespread character set used on Usenet. As a result, applications will still have to provide support for such character sets. Unfortunately there appears to be no best way to do this. For the most part, the UTF-8 support should be largely transparent to the user. For example, the interpreter treats all multibyte characters as a single character which means that the user does not have to be concerned about the internal representation of a character. Rather one must keep in mind the distinction between a character and a byte. 5. Interpreter Interface The S-Lang library provides an interpreter that when embedded into an application, makes the application extensible. Examples of programs that embed the interpreter include the jed editor and the slrn newsreader. Embedding the interpreter is easy. The hard part is to decide what application specific built-in or intrinsic functions should be provided by the application. The S-Lang library provides some pre- defined intrinsic functions, such as string processing functions, and simple file input-output routines. However, the basic philosophy behind the interpreter is that it is not a standalone program and it derives much of its power from the application that embeds it. 5.1. Embedding the Interpreter Only one function needs to be called to embed the S-Lang interpreter into an application: SLang_init_slang. This function initializes the interpreter's data structures and adds some intrinsic functions: if (-1 == SLang_init_slang ()) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); This function does not provide file input output intrinsic nor does it provide mathematical functions. To make these as well as some posix system calls available use if ((-1 == SLang_init_slang ()) /* basic interpreter functions */ || (-1 == SLang_init_slmath ()) /* sin, cos, etc... */ || (-1 == SLang_init_array ()) /* sum, min, max, transpose... */ || (-1 == SLang_init_stdio ()) /* stdio file I/O */ || (-1 == SLang_init_ospath ()) /* path_concat, etc... */ || (-1 == SLang_init_posix_dir ()) /* mkdir, stat, etc. */ || (-1 == SLang_init_posix_process ()) /* getpid, umask, etc. */ || (-1 == SLang_init_posix_io ()) /* open, close, read, ... */ || (-1 == SLang_init_signal ()) /* signal, alarm, ... */ ) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); If you intend to enable all intrinsic functions, then it is simpler to initialize the interpreter via if (-1 == SLang_init_all ()) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); See the S-Lang Library Intrinsic Function Reference for more informa- tion about the intrinsic functions. 5.2. Calling the Interpreter There are several ways of calling the interpreter. The two most common method is to load a file containing S-Lang code, or to load a string. 5.2.1. Loading Files The SLang_load_file and SLns_load_file functions may be used to interpret a file. Both these functions return zero if successful, or -1 upon failure. If either of these functions fail, the interpreter will accept no more code unless the error state is cleared. This is done by calling SLang_restart function to set the interpreter to its default state: if (-1 == SLang_load_file ("site.sl")) { /* Clear the error and reset the interpreter */ SLang_restart (1); } When a file is loaded via SLang_load_file, any non-public variables and functions defined in the file will be placed into a namespace that is local to the file itself. The SLns_load_file function may be used to load a file using a specified namespace, e.g., if (-1 == SLns_load_file ("site.sl", "NS")) { SLang_restart (1); SLang_set_error (0); } will load site.sl into a namespace called NS. If such a namespace does not exist, then it will be created. Both the SLang_load_file and SLns_load_file functions search for files along an application-specified search path. This path may be set using the SLpath_set_load_path function, as well as from interpeted code via the set_slang_load_path function. By default, no search path is defined. NOTE: It is highly recommended that an application embedding the interpreter include the slsh lib directory in the search path. The .sl files that are part of slsh are both useful and and should work with any application embedding the interpreter. Moreover, if the application permits dynamically loaded modules, then there are a growing number of excellent quality modules for slsh that can be utilized by it. Applications that follow this recommendation are said to be conforming. Files are searched as follows: If the name begins with the equivalent of "./" or "../", then it is searched for with respect to the current directory, and not along the load-path. If no such file exists, then an error will be generated. Otherwise, the file is searched for in each of the directories of the load-path by concatenating the path element with the specified file name. The first such file found to exist by this process will be loaded. If a matching file still has not been found, and the file name lacks an extension, then the path is searched with ".sl" and ".slc" appended to the filename. If two such files are found (one ending with ".sl" and the other with ".slc"), then the more recent of the two will be used. If no matching file has been found by this process, then the search will cease and an error generated. The search path is a delimiter separated list of directories that specify where the interpreter looks for files. By default, the value of the delimiter is OS-dependent following the convention of the underlying OS. For example, on Unix the delimiter is represented by a colon, on DOS/Windows it is a semi-colon, and on VMS it is a space. The SLpath_set_delimiter and SLpath_get_delimiter may be used to set and query the delimiter's value, respectively. 5.2.2. Loading Strings There are several other mechanisms for interacting with the interpreter. For example, the SLang_load_string function loads a string into the interpreter and interprets it: if (-1 == SLang_load_string ("message (\"hello\");")) return; Similarly, the SLns_load_string function may be used to load a string into a specified namespace. Typically, an interactive application will load a file via SLang_load_file and then go into a loop that consists of reading lines of input and sending them to the interpreter, e.g., while (EOF != fgets (buf, sizeof (buf), stdin)) { if (-1 == SLang_load_string (buf)) { SLang_restart (1); } } Finally, some applications such as jed and slrn use another method of interacting with the interpreter. They read key sequences from the keyboard and map those key sequences to interpreter functions via the S-Lang keymap interface. 5.3. Intrinsic Functions An intrinsic function is simply a function that is written in C and is made available to the interpreter as a built-in function. For this reason, the words `intrinsic' and `built-in' are often used interchangeably. Applications are expected to add application specific functions to the interpreter. For example, jed adds nearly 300 editor-specific intrinsic functions. The application designer should think carefully about what intrinsic functions to add to the interpreter. 5.3.1. Restrictions on Intrinsic Functions When implementing intrinsic functions, it is necessary to follow a few rules to cooperate with the interpreter. The C version of an intrinsic function takes only pointer arguments. This is because when the interpreter calls an intrinsic function, it passes values to the function by reference and not by value. For example, intrinsic with the declarations: int intrinsic_0 (void); int intrinsic_1 (char *s); void intrinsic_2 (char *s, int *i); void intrinsic_3 (int *i, double *d, double *e); are all valid. However, int invalid_1 (char *s, int len); is not valid since the len parameter is not a pointer. The return value of an intrinsic function must be one of the following types: void, char, short, int, long, double, char *, as well as unsigned versions of the integer types. A function such as int *invalid (void); is not permitted since int* is not a valid return-type for an intrin- sic function. Any other type of value can be passed back to the inter- preter by explicitly pushing the object onto the interpreter's stack via the appropriate "push" function. The current implementation limits the number of arguments of an intrinsic function to 7. The "pop" functions can be used to allow the function to take an arbitrary number as seen from an interpreter script. Another restriction is that the intrinsic function should regard all its parameters as pointers to constant objects and make no attempt to modify the value to which they point. For example, void truncate (char *s) { s[0] = 0; } is illegal since the function modifies the string s. 5.3.2. Adding a New Intrinsic There are two basic mechanisms for adding an intrinsic function to the interpreter: SLadd_intrinsic_function and SLadd_intrin_fun_table. Functions may be added to a specified namespace via SLns_add_intrinsic_function and SLns_add_intrin_fun_table functions. As an specific example, consider a function that will cause the program to exit via the exit C library function. It is not possible to make this function an intrinsic because it does not meet the specifications for an intrinsic function that were described earlier. However, one can call exit from a function that is suitable, e.g., void intrin_exit (int *code) { exit (*code); } This function may be made available to the interpreter as an intrinsic via the SLadd_intrinsic_function routine: if (-1 == SLadd_intrinsic_function ("exit", (FVOID_STAR) intrin_exit, SLANG_VOID_TYPE, 1, SLANG_INT_TYPE)) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); This statement basically tells the interpreter that intrin_exit is a function that returns nothing and takes a single argument: a pointer to an integer (SLANG_INT_TYPE). A user can call this function from within the interpreter via message ("Calling the exit function"); exit (0); After printing a message, this will cause the intrin_exit function to execute, which in turn calls exit. The most convenient mechanism for adding new intrinsic functions is to create a table of SLang_Intrin_Fun_Type objects and add the table via the SLadd_intrin_fun_table function. The table will look like: SLang_Intrin_Fun_Type My_Intrinsics [] = { /* table entries */ MAKE_INTRINSIC_N(...), MAKE_INTRINSIC_N(...), . . MAKE_INTRINSIC_N(...), SLANG_END_INTRIN_FUN_TABLE }; Construction of the table entries may be facilitated using a set of MAKE_INTRINSIC macros defined in slang.h. The main macro is called MAKE_INTRINSIC_N and takes 11 arguments: MAKE_INTRINSIC_N(name, funct-ptr, return-type, num-args, arg-1-type, arg-2-type, ... arg-7-type) Here name is the name of the intrinsic function that the interpreter is to give to the function. func-ptr is a pointer to the intrinsic function taking num-args and returning ret-type. The final 7 arguments specify the argument types. For example, the intrin_exit intrinsic described above may be added to the table using MAKE_INTRINSIC_N("exit", intrin_exit, SLANG_VOID_TYPE, 1, SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0,0,0,0,0,0) While MAKE_INTRINSIC_N is the main macro for constructing table entries, slang.h defines other macros that may prove useful. In particular, an entry for the intrin_exit function may also be created using any of the following forms: MAKE_INTRINSIC_1("exit", intrin_exit, SLANG_VOID_TYPE, SLANG_INT_TYPE) MAKE_INTRINSIC_I("exit", intrin_exit, SLANG_VOID_TYPE) See slang.h for related macros. You are also encouraged to look at, e.g., slang/src/slstd.c for a more extensive examples. The table may be added via the SLadd_intrin_fun_table function, e.g., if (-1 == SLadd_intrin_fun_table (My_Intrinsics, NULL)) { /* an error occurred */ } Please note that there is no need to load a given table more than once, and it is considered to be an error on the part of the applica- tion it adds the same table multiple times. For performance reasons, no checking is performed by the library to see if a table has already been added. Earlier it was mentioned that intrinsics may be added to a specified namespace. To this end, one must first get a pointer to the namespace via the SLns_create_namespace function. The following example illustrates how this function is used to add the My_Intrinsics table to a namespace called my: SLang_NameSpace_Type *ns = SLns_create_namespace ("my"); if (ns == NULL) return -1; return SLns_add_intrin_fun_table (ns, My_Intrinsics, "__MY__")); 5.3.3. More Complicated Intrinsics The intrinsic functions described in the previous example were functions that took a fixed number of arguments. In this section we explore more complex intrinsics such as those that take a variable number of arguments. Consider a function that takes two double precision numbers and returns the lesser: double intrin_min (double *a, double *b) { if (*a < *b) return *a; return *b; } This function may be added to a table of intrinsics using MAKE_INTRINSIC_2("vmin", intrin_min, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE) It is useful to extend this function to take an arbitray number of arguments and return the lesser. Consider the following variant: double intrin_min_n (int *num_ptr) { double min_value, x; unsigned int num = (unsigned int) *num_ptr; if (-1 == SLang_pop_double (&min_value)) return 0.0; num--; while (num > 0) { num--; if (-1 == SLang_pop_double (&x)) return 0.0; if (x < min_value) min_value = x; } return min_value; } Here the number to compare is passed to the function and the actual numbers are removed from the stack via the SLang_pop_double function. A suitable table entry for it is MAKE_INTRINSIC_I("vmin", intrin_min_n, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE) This function would be used in an interpreter script via a statement such as variable xmin = vmin (x0, x1, x2, x3, x4, 5); which computes the smallest of 5 values. The problem with this intrinsic function is that the user must explicitly specify how many numbers to compare. It would be more convenient to simply use variable xmin = vmin (x0, x1, x2, x3, x4); An intrinsic function can query the value of the variable SLang_Num_Function_Args to obtain the necessary information: double intrin_min (void) { double min_value, x; unsigned int num = SLang_Num_Function_Args; if (-1 == SLang_pop_double (&min_value, NULL, NULL)) return 0.0; num--; while (num > 0) { num--; if (-1 == SLang_pop_double (&x, NULL, NULL)) return 0.0; if (x < min_value) min_value = x; } return min_value; } This may be declared as an intrinsic using: MAKE_INTRINSIC_0("vmin", intrin_min, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE) 5.4. Intrinsic Variables It is possible to access an application's global variables from within the interpreter. The current implementation supports the access of variables of type int, char *, and double. There are two basic methods of making an intrinsic variable available to the interpreter. The most straight forward method is to use the function SLadd_intrinsic_variable: int SLadd_intrinsic_variable (char *name, VOID_STAR addr, SLtype data_type, int read_only); For example, suppose that I is an integer variable, e.g., int I; One can make it known to the interpreter as I_Variable via a statement such as if (-1 == SLadd_intrinsic_variable ("I_Variable", &I, SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0)) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); Similarly, if S is declared as char *S; then if (-1 == SLadd_intrinsic_variable ("S_Variable", &S, SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 1)) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); makes S available as a read-only variable with the name S_Variable. Note that if a pointer variable is made available to the interpreter, it should be declared as being read-only to prevent the interpreter from changing the pointer's value. It is important to note that if S were declared as an array of characters, e.g., char S[256]; then it would not be possible to make it directly available to the interpreter. However, one could create a pointer to it, i.e., char *S_Ptr = S; and make S_Ptr available as a read-only variable. One should not make the mistake of trying to use the same address for different variables as the following example illustrates: int do_not_try_this (void) { static char *names[3] = {"larry", "curly", "moe"}; unsigned int i; for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) { int value; if (-1 == SLadd_intrinsic_variable (names[i], (VOID_STAR) &value, SLANG_INT_TYPE, 1)) return -1; } return 0; } Not only does this piece of code create intrinsic variables that use the same address, it also uses the address of a local variable that will go out of scope. The most convenient method for adding many intrinsic variables to the interpreter is to create an array of SLang_Intrin_Var_Type objects and then add the array via SLadd_intrin_var_table. For example, the array static SLang_Intrin_Var_Type Intrin_Vars [] = { MAKE_VARIABLE("I_Variable", &I, SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), MAKE_VARIABLE("S_Variable", &S_Ptr, SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 1), SLANG_END_TABLE }; may be added via if (-1 == SLadd_intrin_var_table (Intrin_Vars, NULL)) exit (EXIT_FAILURE); It should be rather obvious that the arguments to the MAKE_VARIABLE macro correspond to the parameters of the SLadd_intrinsic_variable function. Finally, variables may be added to a specific namespace via the SLns_add_intrin_var_table and SLns_add_intrinsic_variable functions. 5.5. Aggregate Data Objects An aggregate data object is an object that can contain more than one data value. The S-Lang interpreter supports several such objects: arrays, structure, and associative arrays. In the following sections, information about interacting with these objects is given. 5.5.1. Arrays An intrinsic function may interact with an array in several different ways. For example, an intrinsic may create an array and return it. The basic functions for manipulating arrays include: SLang_create_array SLang_pop_array_of_type SLang_push_array SLang_free_array SLang_get_array_element SLang_set_array_element The use of these functions will be illustrated via a few simple exam- ples. The first example shows how to create an return an array of strings to the interpreter. In particular, the names of the four seasons of the year will be returned: void months_of_the_year (void) { static char *seasons[4] = { "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn", "Winter" }; SLang_Array_Type *at; SLindex_Type i, four; four = 4; at = SLang_create_array (SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 0, NULL, &four, 1); if (at == NULL) return; /* Now set the elements of the array */ for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) { if (-1 == SLang_set_array_element (at, &i, &seasons[i])) { SLang_free_array (at); return; } } (void) SLang_push_array (at, 0); SLang_free_array (at); } This example illustrates several points: First of all, the SLang_create_array function was used to create a 1 dimensional array of 4 strings. Since this function could fail, its return value was checked. Also SLindex_Type was used for the array size and index types. In S-Lang version 2, SLindex_Type is typedefed to be an int. However, as this will change in a future version of the library, SLindex_Type should be used. The SLang_set_array_element function was used to set the elements of the newly created array. Note that the address containing the value of the array element was passed and not the value of the array element itself. That is, SLang_set_array_element (at, &i, seasons[i]) was not used. The return value from this function was also checked because it too could also fail. Finally, the array was pushed onto the interpreter's stack and then it was freed. It is important to understand why it was freed. This is because arrays are reference-counted. When the array was created, it was returned with a reference count of 1. When it was pushed, the reference count was bumped up to 2. Then since it was nolonger needed by the function, SLang_free_array was called to decrement the reference count back to 1. For convenience, the second argument to SLang_push_array determines whether or not it is to also free the array. So, instead of the two function calls: (void) SLang_push_array (at, 0); SLang_free_array (at); it is preferable to combine them as (void) SLang_push_array (at, 1); The second example returns a diagonal array of a specified size to the stack. A diagonal array is a 2-d array with all elements zero except for those along the diagonal, which have a value of one: void make_diagonal_array (SLindex_Type n) { SLang_Array_Type *at; SLindex_Type dims[2]; SLindex_Type i, one; dims[0] = dims[1] = n; at = SLang_create_array (SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0, NULL, dims, 2); if (at == NULL) return; one = 1; for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { dims[0] = dims[1] = i; if (-1 == SLang_set_array_element (at, dims, &one)) { SLang_free_array (at); return; } } (void) SLang_push_array (at, 1); } In this example, only the diagonal elements of the array were set. This is bacause when the array was created, all its elements were set to zero. Now consider an example that acts upon an existing array. In particular, consider one that computes the trace of a 2-d matrix, i.e., the sum of the diagonal elements: double compute_trace (void) { SLang_Array_Type *at; double trace; SLindex_Type dims[2]; if (-1 == SLang_pop_array_of_type (&at, SLANG_DOUBLE_TYPE)) return 0.0; /* We want a 2-d square matrix. If the matrix is 1-d and has only one element, then return that element. */ trace = 0.0; if (((at->num_dims == 1) && (at->dims[0] == 1)) || ((at->num_dims == 2) && (at->dims[0] == at->dims[1]))) { double dtrace; SLindex_Type n = at->dims[0]; for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { dims[0] = dims[1] = i; (void) SLang_get_array_element (at, &dims, &dtrace); trace += dtrace; } } else SLang_verror (SL_TYPE_MISMATCH, "Expecting a square matrix"); SLang_free_array (at); return trace; } In this example, SLang_pop_array_of_type was used to pop an array of doubles from the stack. This function will make implicit typecasts in order to return an array of the requested type. 5.5.2. Structures For the purposes of this section, we shall differentiate structures according to whether or not they correspond to an application defined C structure. Those that do are called intrinsic structures, and those do not are called S-Lang interpreter structures. 5.5.2.1. Interpreter Structures The following simple example shows one method that may be used to create and return a structure with a string and integer field to the interpreter's stack: int push_struct_example (char *string_value, int int_value) { char *field_names[2]; SLtype field_types[2]; VOID_STAR field_values[2]; field_names[0] = "string_field"; field_types[0] = SLANG_STRING_TYPE; field_values[0] = &string_value; field_names[1] = "int_field"; field_types[1] = SLANG_INT_TYPE; field_values[1] = &int_value; if (-1 == SLstruct_create_struct (2, field_names, field_types, field_values)) return -1; return 0; } Here, SLstruct_create_struct is used to push a structure with the specified field names and values onto the interpreter's stack. A simpler mechanism exists provided that one has already defined a C structure with a description of how the structure is laid out. For example, consider a C structure defined by typedef struct { char *s; int i; } SI_Type; Its layout may be specified via a table of SLang_CStruct_Field_Type entries: SLang_CStruct_Field_Type SI_Type_Layout [] = { MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(SI_Type, s, "string_field", SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 0), MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(SI_Type, i, "int_field", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), SLANG_END_CSTRUCT_TABLE }; Here, MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD is a macro taking 5 arguments: MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(C-structure-type, C-field-name, slang-field-name, slang-data-type, is-read-only) The first argument is the structure type, the second is the name of a field of the structure, the third is a string that specifies the name of the corresponding field of the S-Lang structure, the fourth argu- ment specifies the field's type, and the last argument specifies whether or not the field should be regarded as read-only. Once the layout of the structure has been specified, pushing a S-Lang version of the structure is trival: int push_struct_example (char *string_value, int int_value) { SI_Type si; si.s = string_value; si.i = int_value; return SLang_push_cstruct ((VOID_STAR)&si, SI_Type_Layout); } This mechanism of structure creation also permits a S-Lang structure to be passed to an intrinsic function through the use of the SLang_pop_cstruct routine, e.g., void print_si_struct (void) { SI_Type si; if (-1 == SLang_pop_cstruct ((VOID_STAR)&si, SI_Type_Layout)) return; printf ("si.i=%d", si.i); printf ("si.s=%s", si.s); SLang_free_cstruct ((VOID_STAR)&si, SI_Type_Layout); } Assuming print_si_struct exists as an intrinsic function, the S-Lang code variable s = struct {string_field, int_field}; s.string_field = "hello"; s.int_field = 20; print_si_struct (s); would result in the display of si.i=20; si.s=hello Note that the SLang_free_cstruct function was called after the con- tents of si were nolonger needed. This was necessary because SLang_pop_cstruct allocated memory to set the char *s field of si. Calling SLang_free_cstruct frees up such memory. Now consider the following: typedef struct { pid_t pid; gid_t group; } X_t; How should the layout of this structure be defined? One might be tempted to use: SLang_CStruct_Field_Type X_t_Layout [] = { MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(X_t, pid, "pid", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(X_t, group, "group", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), SLANG_END_CSTRUCT_TABLE }; However, this assumes pid_t and gid_t have been typedefed as ints. But what if gid_t is a short? In such a case, using MAKE_CSTRUCT_FIELD(X_t, group, "group", SLANG_SHORT_TYPE, 0), would be the appropriate entry for the group field. Of course, one has no way of knowing how gid_t is declared on other systems. For this reason, it is preferable to use the MAKE_CSTRUCT_INT_FIELD macro in cases involving integer valued fields, e.g., SLang_CStruct_Field_Type X_t_Layout [] = { MAKE_CSTRUCT_INT_FIELD(X_t, pid, "pid", 0), MAKE_CSTRUCT_INT_FIELD(X_t, group, "group", 0), SLANG_END_CSTRUCT_TABLE }; Before leaving this section, it is important to mention that access to character array fields is not permitted via this interface. That is, a structure such as typedef struct { char name[32]; } Name_Type; is not supported since char name[32] is not a SLANG_STRING_TYPE object. Always keep in mind that a SLANG_STRING_TYPE object is a char *. 5.5.2.2. Intrinsic Structures Here we show how to make intrinsic structures available to the interpreter. The simplest interface is to structure pointers and not to the actual structures themselves. The latter would require the interpreter to be involved with the creation and destruction of the structures. Dealing with the pointers themselves is far simpler. As an example, consider an object such as typedef struct _Window_Type { char *title; int row; int col; int width; int height; } Window_Type; which defines a window object with a title, size (width, height), and location (row, col). We can make variables of type Window_Type available to the interpreter via a table as follows: static SLang_IStruct_Field_Type Window_Type_Field_Table [] = { MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, title, "title", SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 1), MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, row, "row", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, col, "col", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, width, "width", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, height, "height", SLANG_INT_TYPE, 0), SLANG_END_ISTRUCT_TABLE }; More precisely, this defines the layout of the Window_Type structure. Here, the title has been declared as a read-only field. Using MAKE_ISTRUCT_FIELD(Window_Type, title, "title", SLANG_STRING_TYPE, 0), would allow read-write access. Now suppose that My_Window is a pointer to a Window_Type object, i.e., Window_Type *My_Window; We can make this variable available to the interpreter via the SLadd_istruct_table function: if (-1 == SLadd_istruct_table (Window_Type_Field_Table, (VOID_STAR) &My_Window, "My_Win")) exit (1); This creates a S-Lang interpreter variable called My_Win whose value corresponds to the My_Win structure. This would permit one to access the fields of My_Window via S-Lang statements such as define set_width_and_height (w,h) { My_Win.width = w; My_Win.height = h; } It is extremely important to understand that the interface described in this section does not allow the interpreter to create new instances of Window_Type objects. The interface merely defines an association or correspondence between an intrinsic structure pointer and a S-Lang variable. For example, if the value of My_Window is NULL, then My_Win would also be NULL. One should be careful in allowing read/write access to character string fields. If read/write access is allowed, then the application should always use the SLang_create_slstring and SLang_free_slstring functions to set the character string field of the structure. 5.6. Signals If your program that embeds the interpreter processes signals, then it may be undesirable to allow access to all signals from the interpreter. For example, if your program has a signal handler for SIGHUP then it is possible that an interpreter script could specify a different signal handler, which may or may not be desirable. If you do not want to allow the interpreter access to some signal, then that signal can be made off-limits to the interpreter via the SLsig_forbid_signal function: /* forbid a signal handler for SIGHUP */ SLsig_forbid_signal (SIGHUP, 1); /* Allow a signal handler for SIGTERM */ SLsig_forbid_signal (SIGTERM, 0); By default, all signals are allowed access from the interpreter. 5.7. Exceptions 6. Keyboard Interface S-Lang's keyboard interface has been designed to allow an application to read keyboard input from the user in a system-independent manner. The interface consists of a set of low routines for reading single character data as well as a higher level interface (SLkp) which utilize S-Lang's keymap facility for reading multi-character sequences. To initialize the interface, one must first call the function SLang_init_tty. Before exiting the program, the function SLang_reset_tty must be called to restore the keyboard interface to its original state. Once initialized, the low-level SLang_getkey function may be used to read simgle keyboard characters from the terminal. An application using the higher-level SLkp interface will read charcters using the SLkp_getkey function. In addition to these basic functions, there are also functions to ``unget'' keyboard characters, flush the input, detect pending-input with a timeout, etc. These functions are defined below. 6.1. Initializing the Keyboard Interface The function SLang_init_tty must be called to initialize the terminal for single character input. This puts the terminal in a mode usually referred to as ``raw'' mode. The prototype for the function is: int SLang_init_tty (int abort_char, int flow_ctrl, int opost); It takes three parameters that are used to specify how the terminal is to be initialized. The first parameter, abort_char, is used to specify the interrupt character (SIGINT). Under MSDOS, this value corresponds to the scan code of the character that will be used to generate the interrupt. For example, under MSDOS, 34 should be used to make Ctrl-G generate an interrupt signal since 34 is the scan code for G. On other systems, the value of abort_char will simply be the ascii value of the control character that will be used to generate the interrupt signal, e.g., 7 for Ctrl-G. If -1 is passed, the interrupt character will not be changed. Pressing the interrupt character specified by the first argument will generate a signal (SIGINT) that may or not be caught by the application. It is up to the application to catch this signal. S-Lang provides the function Slang_set_abort_signal to make it easy to facilitate this task. The second parameter is used to specify whether or not flow control should be used. If this parameter is zero, flow control is enabled otherwise it is disabled. Disabling flow control is necessary to pass certain characters to the application (e.g., Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q). For some systems such as MSDOS, this parameter is meaningless. The third parameter, opost, is used to turn output processing on or off. If opost is zero, output processing is not turned on otherwise, output processing is turned on. The SLang_init_tty function returns -1 upon failure. In addition, after it returns, the S-Lang global variable SLang_TT_Baud_Rate will be set to the baud rate of the terminal if this value can be determined. Example: if (-1 == SLang_init_tty (7, 0, 0)) /* For MSDOS, use 34 as scan code */ { fprintf (stderr, "Unable to initialize the terminal.\n"); exit (1); } SLang_set_abort_signal (NULL); Here the terminal is initialized such that flow control and output processing are turned off. In addition, the character Ctrl-G (-- For MSDOS systems, use the scan code 34 instead of 7 for Ctrl-G--) has been specified to be the interrupt character. The function SLang_set_abort_signal is used to install the default S-Lang interrupt signal handler. 6.2. Resetting the Keyboard Interface The function SLang_reset_tty must be called to reset the terminal to the state it was in before the call to SLang_init_tty. The prototype for this function is: void SLang_reset_tty (void); Usually this function is only called before the program exits. How- ever, if the program is suspended it should also be called just before suspension. 6.3. Initializing the SLkp Routines Extra initialization of the higher-level SLkp functions are required because they are layered on top of the lower level routines. Since the SLkp_getkey function is able to process function and arrow keys in a terminal independent manner, it is necessary to call the SLtt_get_terminfo function to get information about the escape character sequences that the terminal's function keys send. Once that information is available, the SLkp_init function can construct the proper keymaps to process the escape sequences. This part of the initialization process for an application using this interface will look something like: SLtt_get_terminfo (); if (-1 == SLkp_init ()) { SLang_doerror ("SLkp_init failed."); exit (1); } if (-1 == SLang_init_tty (-1, 0, 1)) { SLang_doerror ("SLang_init_tty failed."); exit (1); } It is important to check the return status of the SLkp_init function which can failed if it cannot allocate enough memory for the keymap. 6.4. Setting the Interrupt Handler The function SLang_set_abort_signal may be used to associate an interrupt handler with the interrupt character that was previously specified by the SLang_init_tty function call. The prototype for this function is: void SLang_set_abort_signal (void (*)(int)); This function returns nothing and takes a single parameter which is a pointer to a function taking an integer value and returning void. If a NULL pointer is passed, the default S-Lang interrupt handler will be used. The S-Lang default interrupt handler under Unix looks like: static void default_sigint (int sig) { SLsignal_intr (SIGINT, default_sigint); SLKeyBoard_Quit = 1; if (SLang_Ignore_User_Abort == 0) SLang_set_error (SL_UserBreak_Error); } It simply sets the global variable SLKeyBoard_Quit to one and if the variable SLang_Ignore_User_Abort is non-zero, the error state is set to indicate a user break condition. (The function SLsignal_intr is similar to the standard C signal function except that it will inter- rupt system calls. Some may not like this behavior and may wish to call this SLang_set_abort_signal with a different handler.) Although the function expressed above is specific to Unix, the analogous routines for other operating systems are equivalent in functionality even though the details of the implementation may vary drastically (e.g., under MSDOS, the hardware keyboard interrupt int 9h is hooked). 6.5. Reading Keyboard Input with SLang_getkey After initializing the keyboard via SLang_init_tty, the S-Lang function SLang_getkey may be used to read characters from the terminal interface. In addition, the function SLang_input_pending may be used to determine whether or not keyboard input is available to be read. These functions have prototypes: unsigned int SLang_getkey (void); int SLang_input_pending (int tsecs); The SLang_getkey function returns a single character from the termi- nal. Upon failure, it returns 0xFFFF. If the interrupt character spec- ified by the SLang_init_tty function is pressed while this function is called, the function will return the value of the interrupt character and set the S-Lang global variable SLKeyBoard_Quit to a non-zero value. In addition, if the default S-Lang interrupt handler has been specified by a NULL argument to the SLang_set_abort_signal function, the error state of the library will be set to SL_UserBreak_Error unless the variable SLang_Ignore_User_Abort is non-zero. The SLang_getkey function waits until input is available to be read. The SLang_input_pending function may be used to determine whether or not input is ready. It takes a single parameter that indicates the amount of time to wait for input before returning with information regarding the availability of input. This parameter has units of one tenth (1/10) of a second, i.e., to wait one second, the value of the parameter should be 10. Passing a value of zero causes the function to return right away. SLang_input_pending returns a positive integer if input is available or zero if input is not available. It will return -1 if an error occurs. Here is a simple example that reads keys from the terminal until one presses Ctrl-G or until 5 seconds have gone by with no input: #include #include int main () { int abort_char = 7; /* For MSDOS, use 34 as scan code */ unsigned int ch; if (-1 == SLang_init_tty (abort_char, 0, 1)) { fprintf (stderr, "Unable to initialize the terminal.\n"); exit (-1); } SLang_set_abort_signal (NULL); while (1) { fputs ("\nPress any key. To quit, press Ctrl-G: ", stdout); fflush (stdout); if (SLang_input_pending (50) == 0) /* 50/10 seconds */ { fputs ("Waited too long! Bye\n", stdout); break; } ch = SLang_getkey (); if (SLang_get_error () == SL_UserBreak_Error) { fputs ("Ctrl-G pressed! Bye\n", stdout); break; } putc ((int) ch, stdout); } SLang_reset_tty (); return 0; } 6.6. Reading Keyboard Input with SLkp_getkey Unlike the low-level function SLang_getkey, the SLkp_getkey function can read a multi-character sequence associated with function keys. The SLkp_getkey function uses SLang_getkey and S-Lang's keymap facility to process escape sequences. It returns a single integer which describes the key that was pressed: int SLkp_getkey (void); That is, the SLkp_getkey function simple provides a mapping between keys and integers. In this context the integers are called keysyms. For single character input such as generated by the a key on the keyboard, the function returns the character that was generated, e.g., 'a'. For single characters, SLkp_getkey will always return an keysym whose value ranges from 0 to 256. For keys that generate multiple character sequences, e.g., a function or arrow key, the function returns an keysym whose value is greater that 256. The actual values of these keysyms are represented as macros defined in the slang.h include file. For example, the up arrow key corresponds to the keysym whose value is SL_KEY_UP. Since it is possible for the user to enter a character sequence that does not correspond to any key. If this happens, the special keysym SL_KEY_ERR will be returned. Here is an example of how SLkp_getkey may be used by a file viewer: switch (SLkp_getkey ()) { case ' ': case SL_KEY_NPAGE: next_page (); break; case 'b': case SL_KEY_PPAGE: previous_page (); break; case '\r': case SL_KEY_DOWN: next_line (); break; . . case SL_KEY_ERR: default: SLtt_beep (); } Unlike its lower-level counterpart, SLang_getkey, there do not yet exist any functions in the library that are capable of ``ungetting'' keysyms. In particular, the SLang_ungetkey function will not work. 6.7. Buffering Input S-Lang has several functions pushing characters back onto the input stream to be read again later by SLang_getkey. It should be noted that none of the above functions are designed to push back keysyms read by the SLkp_getkey function. These functions are declared as follows: void SLang_ungetkey (unsigned char ch); void SLang_ungetkey_string (unsigned char *buf, int buflen); void SLang_buffer_keystring (unsigned char *buf, int buflen); SLang_ungetkey is the most simple of the three functions. It takes a single character a pushes it back on to the input stream. The next call to SLang_getkey will return this character. This function may be used to peek at the character to be read by first reading it and then putting it back. SLang_ungetkey_string has the same function as SLang_ungetkey except that it is able to push more than one character back onto the input stream. Since this function can push back null (ascii 0) characters, the number of characters to push is required as one of the parameters. The last of these three functions, SLang_buffer_keystring can handle more than one charater but unlike the other two, it places the characters at the end of the keyboard buffer instead of at the beginning. Note that the use of each of these three functions will cause SLang_input_pending to return right away with a non-zero value. Finally, the S-Lang keyboard interface includes the function SLang_flush_input with prototype void SLang_flush_input (void); It may be used to discard all input. Here is a simple example that looks to see what the next key to be read is if one is available: int peek_key () { int ch; if (SLang_input_pending (0) == 0) return -1; ch = SLang_getkey (); SLang_ungetkey (ch); return ch; } 6.8. Global Variables Although the following S-Lang global variables have already been mentioned earlier, they are gathered together here for completeness. int SLang_Ignore_User_Abort; If non-zero, pressing the interrupt character will not result in the libraries error state set to SL_UserBreak_Error. volatile int SLKeyBoard_Quit; This variable is set to a non-zero value when the interrupt character is pressed. If the interrupt character is pressed when SLang_getkey is called, the interrupt character will be returned from SLang_getkey. int SLang_TT_Baud_Rate; On systems which support it, this variable is set to the value of the terminal's baud rate after the call to SLang_init_tty. 7. Readline Interface The S-Lang library includes simple but capable readline functionality in its SLrline layer. The SLrline routines provide a simple mechanism for an application to get prompted input from a user with command line editing, completions, and history recall. The use of the SLrline routines will be illustrated with a few simple examples. All of the examples given in this section may be found in the file demo/rline.c in the S-Lang source code distribution. For clarity, the code shown below omits most error checking. 7.1. Introduction The first example simply reads input from the user until the user enters quit: SLrline_Type *rl; SLang_init_tty (-1, 0, 1); rl = SLrline_open (80, SL_RLINE_BLINK_MATCH); while (1) { char *line; unsigned int len; line = SLrline_read_line (rl, "prompt>", &len); if (line == NULL) break; if (0 == strcmp (line, "quit")) { SLfree (line); break; } (void) fprintf (stdout, "\nRead %d bytes: %s\n", strlen(line), line); SLfree (line); } SLrline_close (rl); SLang_reset_tty (); In this example, the SLtt interface functions SLang_init_tty and SLang_reset_tty functions have been used to open and close the termi- nal for reading input. By default, the SLrline functions use the SLang_getkey function to read characters and assume that the terminal has been properly initialized before use. The SLrline_open function was used to create an instance of an SLrline_Type object. The function takes two arguments: and edit window display width (80 above), and a set of flags. In this case, the SL_RLINE_BLINK_MATCH flags has been used to turn on parenthesis blinking. Once finished, the SLrline_Type object must be freed using the SLrline_close function. The actual reading of the line occurs in the SLrline_read_line function, which takes an SLrline_Type instance and a string representing the prompt to be used. The line itself is returned as a malloced char * and must be freed using the SLfree function after used. The length (in bytes) of the line is returned via the parameter list. If an end-of-file character (^D on Unix) was entered at the beginning of a line, the SLrline_read_line function will return NULL. However, it also return NULL if an error of some sort was encountered. The only way to tell the difference between these two conditions is to call SLang_get_error. The above code fragment did not provide for any sort of SIGINT handling. Without such a provision, pressing ^C at the prompt could be enough to kill the application. This is especially undesirable if one wants to press ^C to abort the call to SLrline_read_line. The function example_2 in demo/rline.c shows code to handle this situation as well as distinguish between EOF and other errors. 7.2. Interpreter Interface SLrline features such as command-line completion, vi-emulation, and so on are implemented through callbacks or hooks from the SLrline functions to the S-Lang interpreter. Hence, this functionality is only available to applications that make use of the interpreter. TBD... 8. Screen Management The S-Lang library provides two interfaces to terminal independent routines for manipulating the display on a terminal. The highest level interface, known as the SLsmg interface is discussed in this section. It provides high level screen management functions for manipulating the display in an optimal manner and is similar in spirit to the curses library. The lowest level interface, or the SLtt interface, is used by the SLsmg routines to actually perform the task of writing to the display. This interface is discussed in another section. Like the keyboard routines, the SLsmg routines are platform independent and work the same on MSDOS, OS/2, Unix, and VMS. The screen management, or SLsmg, routines are initialized by function SLsmg_init_smg. Once initialized, the application uses various SLsmg functions to write to a virtual display. This does not cause the physical terminal display to be updated immediately. The physical display is updated to look like the virtual display only after a call to the function SLsmg_refresh. Before exiting, the application using these routines is required to call SLsmg_reset_smg to reset the display system. The following subsections explore S-Lang's screen management system in greater detail. 8.1. Initialization The function SLsmg_init_smg must be called before any other SLsmg function can be used. It has the simple prototype: int SLsmg_init_smg (void); It returns zero if successful or -1 if it cannot allocate space for the virtual display. For this routine to properly initialize the virtual display, the capabilities of the terminal must be known as well as the size of the physical display. For these reasons, the lower level SLtt routines come into play. In particular, before the first call to SLsmg_init_smg, the application is required to call the function SLtt_get_terminfo before calling SLsmg_init_smg. The SLtt_get_terminfo function sets the global variables SLtt_Screen_Rows and SLtt_Screen_Cols to the values appropriate for the terminal. It does this by calling the SLtt_get_screen_size function to query the terminal driver for the appropriate values for these variables. From this point on, it is up to the application to maintain the correct values for these variables by calling the SLtt_get_screen_size function whenever the display size changes, e.g., in response to a SIGWINCH signal. Finally, if the application is going to read characters from the keyboard, it is also a good idea to initialize the keyboard routines at this point as well. 8.2. Resetting SLsmg Before the program exits or suspends, the function SLsmg_reset_smg should be called to shutdown the display system. This function has the prototype void SLsmg_reset_smg (void); This will deallocate any memory allocated for the virtual screen and reset the terminal's display. Basically, a program that uses the SLsmg screen management functions and S-Lang's keyboard interface will look something like: #include int main () { SLtt_get_terminfo (); SLang_init_tty (-1, 0, 0); SLsmg_init_smg (); /* do stuff .... */ SLsmg_reset_smg (); SLang_reset_tty (); return 0; } If this program is compiled and run, all it will do is clear the screen and position the cursor at the bottom of the display. In the following sections, other SLsmg functions will be introduced which may be used to make this simple program do much more. 8.3. Handling Screen Resize Events The function SLsmg_reinit_smg is designed to be used in conjunction with resize events. Under Unix-like operating systems, when the size of the display changes, the application will be sent a SIGWINCH signal. To properly handle this signal, the SLsmg routines must be reinitialized to use the new display size. This may be accomplished by calling SLtt_get_screen_size to get the new size, followed by SLsmg_reinit_smg to reinitialize the SLsmg interface to use the new size. Keep in mind that these routines should not be called from within the signal handler. The following code illustrates the main ideas involved in handling such events: static volatile int Screen_Size_Changed; static sigwinch_handler (int sig) { Screen_Size_Changed = 1; SLsignal (SIGWINCH, sigwinch_handler); } int main (int argc, char **argv) { SLsignal (SIGWINCH, sigwinch_handler); SLsmg_init_smg (); . . /* Now enter main loop */ while (not_done) { if (Screen_Size_Changed) { SLtt_get_screen_size (); SLsmg_reinit_smg (); redraw_display (); } . . } return 0; } 8.4. SLsmg Functions In the previous sections, functions for initializing and shutting down the SLsmg routines were discussed. In this section, the rest of the SLsmg functions are presented. These functions act only on the virtual display. The physical display is updated when the SLsmg_refresh function is called and not until that time. This function has the simple prototype: void SLsmg_refresh (void); 8.4.1. Positioning the cursor The SLsmg_gotorc function is used to position the cursor at a given row and column. The prototype for this function is: void SLsmg_gotorc (int row, int col); The origin of the screen is at the top left corner and is given the coordinate (0, 0), i.e., the top row of the screen corresponds to row = 0 and the first column corresponds to col = 0. The last row of the screen is given by row = SLtt_Screen_Rows - 1. It is possible to change the origin of the coordinate system by using the function SLsmg_set_screen_start with prototype: void SLsmg_set_screen_start (int *r, int *c); This function takes pointers to the new values of the first row and first column. It returns the previous values by modifying the values of the integers at the addresses specified by the parameter list. A NULL pointer may be passed to indicate that the origin is to be set to its initial value of 0. For example, int r = 10; SLsmg_set_screen_start (&r, NULL); sets the origin to (10, 0) and after the function returns, the vari- able r will have the value of the previous row origin. 8.4.2. Writing to the Display SLsmg has several routines for outputting text to the virtual display. The following points should be understood: o The text is output at the position of the cursor of the virtual display and the cursor is advanced to the position that corresponds to the end of the text. o Text does not wrap at the boundary of the display--- it is trucated. This behavior seems to be more useful in practice since most programs that would use screen management tend to be line oriented. o Control characters are displayed in a two character sequence representation with ^ as the first character. That is, Ctrl-X is output as ^X. o The behavior of the newline character depends upon the value of the SLsmg_Newline_Behavior variable. It may be set to any one of the following values: SLSMG_NEWLINE_IGNORED : If a newline character is encountered when writing a string to the virtual display, the characters in the string following the newline character will not be written. In other words, the newline character will act like a string termination character. This is the default setting for the SLsmg_Newline_Behavior. SLSMG_NEWLINE_MOVES : If a newline character is when writing to the virtual display, the following characters will be written to the beginning of the next row. SLSMG_NEWLINE_SCROLLS : When set to this value and a newline character is output at the bottom of the virtual display, the display will scroll up. Otherwise the behavior will be the same as that of SLSMG_NEWLINE_MOVES. SLSMG_NEWLINE_PRINTABLE : When set to this value, a newline character will be printed as the two characters sequence ^J. Although the some of the above items might appear to be too restrictive, in practice this is not seem to be the case. In fact, the design of the output routines was influenced by their actual use and modified to simplify the code of the application utilizing them. void SLsmg_write_char (char ch); Write a single character to the virtual display. void SLsmg_write_nchars (char *str, int len); Write len characters pointed to by str to the virtual display. void SLsmg_write_string (char *str); Write the null terminated string given by pointer str to the virtual display. This function is a wrapper around SLsmg_write_nchars. void SLsmg_write_nstring (char *str, int n); The purpose of this function is to write a null terminated string to a field that is at most n cells wide. Each double-wide character in the string will use two cells. If the string is not big enough to fill the n cells, the rest of the cells will be filled with space characters. This function is a wrapper around SLsmg_write_wrapped_string. void SLsmg_write_wrapped_string(SLuchar_Type *str, int r, int c, unsigned int dr, unsigned int dc, int fill) The purpose of this function is two write a string str to a box defined by rows and columns satisfying r<=row_module function is no longer supported because it did not support namespaces. Use the init__module_ns function instead. B. Copyright The S-Lang library is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. B.1. The GNU Public License GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free soft- ware--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This Gen- eral Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your pro- grams, too. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations. Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you". Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifi- able sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to con- trol compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include any- thing that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operat- ing system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. 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These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. 7. 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If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License. 9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation. 10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally. NO WARRANTY 11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. 12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms. To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found. Copyright (C) 19yy This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail. If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appro- priate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program. You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names: Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. , 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applica- tions with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License. B.2. The Unicode Inc. Copyright This software makes use of the Unicode tables published by Unicode, Inc under the following terms: COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE Copyright (c) 1991-2009 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed under the Terms of Use in http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Unicode data files and any associated documentation (the "Data Files") or Unicode software and any associated documentation (the "Software") to deal in the Data Files or Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Data Files or Software, and to permit persons to whom the Data Files or Software are furnished to do so, provided that (a) the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear with all copies of the Data Files or Software, (b) both the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear in associated documentation, and (c) there is clear notice in each modified Data File or in the Software as well as in the documentation associated with the Data File(s) or Software that the data or software has been modified. 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