wwlisp is a programming language suitable for scripting and creating applications that can be interpreted.
This programming language is a concise, object-oriented dialect of Lisp that was loosely inspired by Common Lisp, Smalltalk, or even C++. The focus of the project is to solve specific categories of problems, and therefore, the implementation does not comprise mechanisms intended to treat all the types of data traditional in Lisp or to implement theoretical concepts of software engineering or facilities.
Syntactical forms related to the conservation of memory or the intricacies of the language were abandoned in favor of a lighter syntax. However, the interpreter includes traditional mechanisms and structures for this type of program. The memory is organized into four spaces: pointerspace, stringspace, binaryspace, and the dynamic stack for calling functions.
Pointer, string, and binary spaces are pre-allocated at the startup of the interpreter and used gradually during operation, while garbage collector algorithms recover space in case of exhaustion. The version 8 interpreter includes about 400 intrinsic compiled functions and a library loaded at startup defining more than 60 additional functions dedicated mostly to debugging and edition.
Moreover, the interpreter includes natively the following possibilities: multi-threading, with independence of the environments of each thread and communication between those, a foreign function interface allowing to call C APIs accessible under the form of shared objects or DLL, possibility of developing C or C++ plugins or extensions to the language which can be loaded and unloaded dynamically, process handling and IPC, streams, pipes, and sockets handling.
The latest release of WWLISP contains numerous bug fixes for miscellaneous bugs and defects in the syntax and documentation. The overall stability and usefulness of the interpreter have been enhanced, notably by more regression testing. Additionally, the release includes a new build of the wwlispkdialog library, which allows the scripting of KDE dialogs, making use of some of the most prominent KDE widgets without lots of coding. There is also the wwlisp2dimage library that interfaces with the well-known GD library and allows to draw and save pictures.
Note that the source packages compile on Debian 4 and on SuSE, provided that GD and KDE are installed with headers. The precompiled package installs everything at once, but was tested only on Debian 4.
Version 8.2.3: N/A