Ch Solves Portability Headaches
--- It lets you use new or legacy C code regardless of platform
by Professor Gary Wang, University of Manitoba
Several years ago I was developing an engineering expert system on a
VAX min-computer. However, a SUN workstation using X-windows was
hosting the maintenance interface of the system's knowledge base. With
the VAX machine running the VMS operating system and the Sun running
UNIX, I had two operating systems to worry about. I was often confused
and had a hard time making my code work on both machines.
Soon after, I had to develop a production scheduling system on a
Windows-based system. That meant learning Windows programming, which to
me seemed a completely new language even though I was familiar with C
syntax it is based on. Nowadays, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, VB,
and other languages are popular.
But thanks to Ch language environment from SoftIntegration, Inc., I
have far less to struggle with. Essentially a superset of C language
interpreter, it is fully compatible with ISO C90 standard and
independent to any platform. With Ch, I can program in C for my
research and for web applications, without worrying about program
portability or learning new programming languages. What's written for
Unix can be immediately executed in Windows, and vice versa.
For my research, I write many programs for Unix; but I run the programs
mainly on a Windows-based PC. Were it not for CH, it would be
time-consuming as well as frustrating to port all my legacy Unix
Programs to Windows.
I installed Ch Professional Edition, version 2.1, for Windows on my
desktop. Every one of my legacy C/C++ programs worked gracefully on
the PC without fuss of tweaking codes and without going through the
tedious edit-compile-link-debug cycle. A program with a single .c file
and multiple header files runs readily in Ch with on modification. One
with multiple .c files and header files needs a simple separate command
file that gives the names of all .c files for Ch, but the original
source code does not require any modification.
Another rewarding feature is that Ch is also a genuine C shell.
Beginners find it easy to use. If a students type "printf("Hello,
World!")", Ch will print "Hello World!" on screen. This interactive
mode really helps students learn C. In Windows, Ch enables over 100
Unix commands, including vi, ls, rm, awk, grep, and find, to interact
with C code directly.
In addition, Ch provides many numerical analyses routines and plotting
tools for scientific computation, similar to Matlab's. With Ch you
can solve simultaneous and differential equations, Fourier transform,
and so on, very quickly. Similarly, you can generate plots easily and
display and print them out directly, or else export them in a variety
of different file formats. A plot may even be generated as on the fly
using a CGI script in a Web server for display in a Web browser.
It can also be copied and pasted
using, for example, Microsoft Word.
Students in disciplines other than computer science can just learn C
and save their
energies for their own disciplines without struggling with programming
as well. Also, as an interpreter, Ch can save a lot of time during
program development. It requires no compilation and linking and,
because it is a compact language, just a few lines of code can perform
many complex tasks.
As a C interpreter superset, Ch supports major features in the latest C
standard, called C99, classes in C++, and standards such as Posix,
X11/Motif, Open-GL, ODBC, and GTK+. Its built-in graphical support, CGI
for Web servers, and numeric extensions make Ch very appealing.
Computational arrays implemented in Ch as first-class objects and
variable-length arrays are very useful for matrix computation and
linear algebra. Advanced numerical analysis functions in Ch are as
complete and simple as with Matlab, though the Ch toolkits for numeric
features need to be expanded to be comparable to Matlab's in power and
depth.
Scientists, engineers, and researchers will find Ch an environment
in which they can easily and quickly prototype software and test new
ideas, aided by many supporting tools in C, a programming language most
of us already know. Contact: SoftIntegration, Inc., 216 F Street,
# 68, Davis, CA 95616; phone, + 530 297 7398; fax, + 530 297 7392;
email, sales@softintegration.com; Web, http://www.softintegration.com.
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