Ada script, anyone

Ada script, anyone

[Xcriber51]

Hi

This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
(script) interpreter?

The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.

It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
Ada.

Thanks!

Ken

Re: Ada script, anyone

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Xcriber51 wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
> (script) interpreter?
> 
> The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
> barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
> an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.
> 
> It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
> Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
> be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
> Ada.

Maybe not what you're asking for, but there's BUSH, which is a unix 
shell with Ada-like syntax:

http://www.pegasoft.ca/bush.html

(Disclaimer: never used it myself so I can't provide first hand 
experience. That said, I ported an Eliza bush script to proper Ada and 
it was almost straight).

Looking at the webpage now I see it has grown further than simply an Ada 
shell... anyone using it?

Re: Ada script, anyone

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

Xcriber51 wrote:

> Hi
> 
> This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
> (script) interpreter?
> 
> The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
> barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
> an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.
> 
> It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
> Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
> be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
> Ada.

It's not clear if you're asking for something like BUSH, a Linux shell, or an 
IDE, like AdaGIDE or GPS.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Monsieur Arthur King, who has the brain of a duck, you know."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
09

Re: Ada script, anyone

[Ludovic Brenta]

"Xcriber51" <xcriber@[OMITTED]> writes:

> Hi
>
> This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
> (script) interpreter?

http://www.pegasoft.ca/bush.html

> The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
> barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
> an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.
>
> It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
> Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
> be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
> Ada.

If you are looking for a direct replacement for Visual Basic, I don't
think there is one right now. However there is a project on
SourceForge to make one:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnavi

From what I gather, GNAVI is work in progress.  Some parts of it, in
particular the GWindows library, are already mature, but the GUI
builder is beta.  GWindows is Windows only but there are plans to port
it to other platforms.

Another solution is AdaCore's development suite for GTK+ or GNOME
development.  This works on many platforms.

* Glade is a point-and-click GUI builder that represents your GUI as
  an XML file.  The associated library, libglade, allows your
  application to load this XML file and create its GUI at run time.
  Alternatively, glade can generate source code in various languages
  from the XML file.  See http://glade.gnome.org/

* GtkAda is a library allowing you to program (in a traditional way)
  GTK+ interfaces in Ada.  It also contains Gate, a program that takes
  the XML file produced by Glade and generates Ada source from it, and
  an Ada binding to libglade.  Thus, you can use glade from Ada.  See
  http://libre.adacore.com/

* The GNAT Programming Studio is a complete IDE for Ada.  See
  http://libre.adacore.com

HTH

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Ada script, anyone

[Craig Carey]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 05:26:56 -0500, "Xcriber51" wrote:
...
>This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
>(script) interpreter? [...] Ken

The Tope symbolic algebra replacement for REDUCE has a GUI front-end
that can replace CMD.EXE. Also an Ada interpreter might have 2 parsers.

An interpreter implementing something similar to Ada might implement
recursion when procedures and packages are nested. It seems a bit too
complex given the competition from real Ada and the very fast
compilation speeds that can be observed.

A sample executables accepting input in 6.txt (eg. "x := a+1;")
http://tope.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList
 1.35MB 4 Dec 2005. (2 Ada Yacc parsers in series)

Being developed by me is the Ada preprocessor, which allows this Ada
code containing the "do" keyword:

---------------------
if F then
  if X then goto X15; end; -- no need to write "end if;"
spec
  I2 : Integer;
do
  I2 := 99;
elsif ...
  ...

finally -- all cases that don't go into an "else" part
   iff F in 1 | 2 then A; elif F = 3 then B; end;  -- : A "case" stmt
   ...
end if;     --  Similarly for loops.
---------------------

C always offered a "do" keyword, which a macro can implement as "{ }".

I got GNAT 3.15p Ada and MinGW 3.4.2 Ada to succesfully mix inside of
one executable, ie. without SIGSEGVs.

So C software that runs in Windows can be gradually ported over to GNAT
3.15p Ada (AdaCore's "gnat-3.15p-nt.exe", 18MB).





--  Craig Carey, Auckland

Re: Ada script, anyone

[David Emery]

Seems to me that a strongly-typed Python interpreter would come pretty close...

			dave

Xcriber51 wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
> (script) interpreter?
> 
> The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
> barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
> an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.
> 
> It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
> Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
> be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
> Ada.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ken
> 

Re: Ada script, anyone

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> "Xcriber51" <xcriber@[OMITTED]> writes:
> 
> 
>>Hi
>>
>>This will probably be a (slightly?) absurd question, but is there an Ada
>>(script) interpreter?
> 
> 
> http://www.pegasoft.ca/bush.html
> 
> 
>>The reason I'm asking is I know a C/C++ interpreter which, though it is a
>>barebones commandline interpreter and does not provide the full comfort of
>>an integrated IDE (with a debugger, etc.), makes life easier.
>>
>>It'd be great to have a tool like the universally ever popular Visual
>>Basic thing - which most coders I know prefer to everything else - that'd
>>be as easy to get going and introduce them (or help them side-grade) to
>>Ada.
> 
> 
> If you are looking for a direct replacement for Visual Basic, I don't
> think there is one right now. However there is a project on
> SourceForge to make one:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnavi
> 
> From what I gather, GNAVI is work in progress.  Some parts of it, in
> particular the GWindows library, are already mature, but the GUI
> builder is beta.  GWindows is Windows only but there are plans to port
> it to other platforms.
> 
> Another solution is AdaCore's development suite for GTK+ or GNOME
> development.  This works on many platforms.
> 
> * Glade is a point-and-click GUI builder that represents your GUI as
>   an XML file.  The associated library, libglade, allows your
>   application to load this XML file and create its GUI at run time.
>   Alternatively, glade can generate source code in various languages
>   from the XML file.  See http://glade.gnome.org/
> 
> * GtkAda is a library allowing you to program (in a traditional way)
>   GTK+ interfaces in Ada.  It also contains Gate, a program that takes
>   the XML file produced by Glade and generates Ada source from it, and
>   an Ada binding to libglade.  Thus, you can use glade from Ada.  See
>   http://libre.adacore.com/

Unless I miss something, the Glade builder doesn't help you in setting 
up treeviews, for example. That's the part I hate the most, the one that 
I must do most frequently and the one in which I lose most time. Someone 
knows of some helper tool for setting up treeviews?

> * The GNAT Programming Studio is a complete IDE for Ada.  See
>   http://libre.adacore.com