A Guide to the S-Lang Language

John E. Davis, davis@space.mit.edu

1. Preface

• 1.1 A Brief History of S-Lang
• 1.2 Acknowledgements

2. Introduction

• 2.1 Language Features
• 2.2 Data Types and Operators
• 2.3 Statements and Functions
• 2.4 Error Handling
• 2.5 Run-Time Library
• 2.6 Input/Output
• 2.7 Obtaining S-Lang

3. Overview of the Language

• 3.1 Variables and Functions
• 3.2 Strings
• 3.3 Referencing and Dereferencing
• 3.4 Arrays
• 3.5 Structures and User-Defined Types
• 3.6 Namespaces

4. Data Types and Literal Constants

• 4.1 Predefined Data Types
• 4.2 Typecasting: Converting from one Type to Another

5. Identifiers

6. Variables

7. Operators

• 7.1 Unary Operators
• 7.2 Binary Operators
• 7.3 Mixing Integer and Floating Point Arithmetic
• 7.4 Short Circuit Boolean Evaluation

8. Statements

• 8.1 Variable Declaration Statements
• 8.2 Assignment Statements
• 8.3 Conditional and Looping Statements
• 8.4 break, return, continue

9. Functions

• 9.1 Declaring Functions
• 9.2 Parameter Passing Mechanism
• 9.3 Referencing Variables
• 9.4 Functions with a Variable Number of Arguments
• 9.5 Returning Values
• 9.6 Multiple Assignment Statement
• 9.7 Exit-Blocks

10. Name Spaces

11. Arrays

• 11.1 Creating Arrays
• 11.2 Reshaping Arrays
• 11.3 Indexing Arrays
• 11.4 Arrays and Variables
• 11.5 Using Arrays in Computations

12. Associative Arrays

13. Structures and User-Defined Types

• 13.1 Defining a Structure
• 13.2 Accessing the Fields of a Structure
• 13.3 Linked Lists
• 13.4 Defining New Types

14. Error Handling

• 14.1 Error-Blocks
• 14.2 Clearing Errors

15. Loading Files: evalfile and autoload

16. File Input/Output

• 16.1 Input/Output via stdio
• 16.2 POSIX I/O
• 16.3 Advanced I/O techniques

17. Debugging

18. Regular Expressions

• 18.1 S-Lang RE Syntax
• 18.2 Differences between S-Lang and egrep REs

19. Future Directions

Appendix

20. Copyright

• 20.1 The GNU Public License
• 20.2 The Artistic License