F-Script is an

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

scripting

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

for Apple's

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

operating system developed by Philippe Mougin. F-Script is an interactive language based on

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by ...

, using macOS's native

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

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 In computer science, array programming refers to solutions which allow the application of operations to an entire set of values at once. Such solutions are commonly used in scientific and engineering settings. Modern programming languages tha ...

as in the language APL. F-Script provides an interpreted,

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but m ...

environment with support for workspaces, which provide a rich set of functions including

object persistence An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are ...

distributed object In distributed computing, distributed objects are objects (in the sense of object-oriented programming) that are distributed across different address spaces, either in different processes on the same computer, or even in multiple computers connec ...

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

(GUI) framework,

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

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, is a valid array

literal Literal may refer to: * Interpretation of legal concepts: ** Strict constructionism ** The plain meaning rule (a.k.a. "literal rule") * Literal (mathematical logic), certain logical roles taken by propositions * Literal (computer programmin ...

. 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 = and B = , then F-Script allows A + B = .

Usage

F-Script is chiefly used as a lightweight scripting layer on top of

application programming interface (API). It can be embedded in applications using the F-Script framework and

Interface Builder Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple's macOS operating system. It is part of Xcode (formerly Project Builder), the Apple Developer developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa and Carbon developers to cre ...

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.

Forks

The original F-script development by Philippe Mougin stopped at version 2.1 in 2011. Ilya Kulakov (Kentzo) took over the FScript.org website and updated the program to work with Mac OS X 10.7 through 10.10 until version 2.3 of 2014, building off Jonathan Mitchell's modernization work. Kulakov noted that as F-Script ties deeply into the system, the code must be changed to reflect the framework available in each Mac OS X release. The last update to this chain of work was done in 2018, by Wolfgang Baird, who updated F-Script to work with Mac OS X 10.12.

References

External links

* *
F-Script Google Techtalk
{{Smalltalk programming language Array programming languages Class-based programming languages Dynamically typed programming languages Object-oriented programming languages Scripting languages Smalltalk programming language family