F-Script (programming language)

F-Script is an object-oriented scripting programming language for Apple's macOS operating system developed by Philippe Mougin. F-Script is an interactive language based on Smalltalk, using macOS's native Cocoa API.

Overview

F-Script is based on a pure object paradigm: every entity manipulated within the language is an object. Its base syntax and concepts are identical to those of the language Smalltalk (the canonical example of an object-oriented language) with specific extensions to support array programming as in the language APL.

F-Script provides an interpreted, interactive environment with support for workspaces, which provide a rich set of functions including object persistence, distributed objects, graphical user interface (GUI) framework, database access, among other things.

Syntax

Like Smalltalk, F-Script's syntax is very simple, without requiring specific notation for control structures which are provided in a unified manner by the message send operation. Unlike Smalltalk, F-Script provides specific notational extensions to support the Array class, using curly brackets to describe literal arrays, which may contain any F-Script expressions. For example,

{1+3, 'name', true}

is a valid array literal. The empty array is denoted by {}. Arrays of arrays are supported transparently, since any array is just another object.

Message sending

Message expressions in F-Script are similar to those in Smalltalk: they specify which object is the receiver of the message, which operation is called by the message, and any argument objects needed by the operation. F-Script supports unary, binary, and keyword messages. F-Script message semantics are extended to support array programming by recognizing that an array operation, such as adding to numerical vectors, must be viewed as generating a number of messages relating the elements of the vectors involved. Thus, if:

A = {1, 2, 3}

and:

B = {10, 20, 30},

then F-Script allows:

A + B = {11, 22, 33}

Usage

F-Script is chiefly used as a lightweight scripting layer on top of macOS's Cocoa application programming interface (API). It can be embedded in applications using the F-Script framework and Interface Builder palettes. It can also be used interactively from the F-Script interpreter to prototype applications. Finally, it can be used to explore applications' object hierarchies using an injector such as F-Script Anywhere.

External links

• F-Script on GitHub
• F-Script Google Techtalk