SKILL compiler?

Hi,

I thought Andrew's response was fairly clear, but I will answer your last questions and reiterate what he said while adding to it.

SKILL is an interpreted language, rather than compiled like C or C++, hence you do not compile it, you enter source code and run it. It is possible to interactively test SKILL code line by line, or you can load one or more files that define one or more functions and test several statements together in a flow.  If there is a syntax error during loading or entering then the SKILL interpreter flags these at that time.  However beyond syntax problems, often coding errors are not obvious until run-time, and then these can cause warnings or errors when they are encountered.  The SKILL IDE is the perfect tool for debugging such issues, especially those that might be hard to track down. Also there is a SKILL Lint checker which is a static SKILL analysis tool that can help you to avoid common coding pitfalls and it will flag up things like undeclared global variables, as well as give a total score - I think of this as a general "goodness" score (though it is possible to write bad code that gets a top score of 100!).

In summary:

SKILL is interpreted and not compiled (though it is byte-code compiled internally)
Syntax errors are flagged during input (either in the CIW or during loading of a file)
Other coding errors may not be apparent until run time
There is an integrated debugging environment (IDE) for SKILL as part of the virtuoso executable

Regards,

Lawrence.

Hi,

I thought Andrew's response was fairly clear, but I will answer your last questions and reiterate what he said while adding to it.

SKILL is an interpreted language, rather than compiled like C or C++, hence you do not compile it, you enter source code and run it. It is possible to interactively test SKILL code line by line, or you can load one or more files that define one or more functions and test several statements together in a flow.  If there is a syntax error during loading or entering then the SKILL interpreter flags these at that time.  However beyond syntax problems, often coding errors are not obvious until run-time, and then these can cause warnings or errors when they are encountered.  The SKILL IDE is the perfect tool for debugging such issues, especially those that might be hard to track down. Also there is a SKILL Lint checker which is a static SKILL analysis tool that can help you to avoid common coding pitfalls and it will flag up things like undeclared global variables, as well as give a total score - I think of this as a general "goodness" score (though it is possible to write bad code that gets a top score of 100!).

In summary:

SKILL is interpreted and not compiled (though it is byte-code compiled internally)
Syntax errors are flagged during input (either in the CIW or during loading of a file)
Other coding errors may not be apparent until run time
There is an integrated debugging environment (IDE) for SKILL as part of the virtuoso executable

Regards,

Lawrence.