Question

While searching I came across this. It looks interesting but I have absolutely no idea of what it’s for. I like it because you can compile to php, a language I don’t enjoy a lot that’s really useful. This could be a way I can use php without touching it. The language is odd looking, is there anyone out there who has tried it?

Thanks

Answer 1

The first thing I see is that the last development change to the project was in 2007 (maybe 2008, can’t tell what those side projects are), so it’s out of date. Scriptol’s compilers seems to take the Scriptol code you wrote and compile it in an executable file for that language.

I tried solp.exe out (the PHP compiler) with the Fibonacci example on the website. Here is the Scriptol fib.sol file:

 int fibmax = 20

int fibonacci(int n)
    int u = 0
    int v = 1
    int t
    for int i in 2 .. n
        t = u + v
        u = v
        v = t
    /for
return v

for int x in 1..fibmax echo "fib(" , x , ") ", fibonacci(x), "\n" 

Here is the fib.php file it created:

<?php
$fibmax=20;
function fibonacci($n)
{
   $u=0;
   $v=1;
   $t=0;
   for($i=2;$i<=$n;$i++)
   {
      $t=$u+$v;
      $u=$v;
      $v=$t;
   }
   return $v;
}

for($x=1;$x<=$fibmax;$x++)
{
   echo "fib(",$x,") ",fibonacci($x),"\n";
}

?>

It doesn’t interface with your web server, so you must compile the scripts — in PHP’s case, instead of compiling to a .exe file, it’s compiling to a .php file for your web server to execute. C++ and, had they finished it, .NET would compile to .exe’s. (I did test the C++ compiler, but as I don’t have a real C++ compiler on my PC, it just created fib.cpp.)

It’s an interesting idea, I think: Create a generic language that has compilers to turn it into another language. I don’t know of any languages that have successfully done that. I think it would be more prudent to just learn the language you are compiling to, but the idea that you could compile to multiple languages is cool. Unfortunately it looks like Scriptol hasn’t been touched in years.