# Overview
Nife is a programming language based on the principles set of Forth defined by Charles H. Moore in the 1960s. It does not include the full functionality of Forth, that is the reason why it is considered as a "Forth-like" language.
His ambition is to offer people who are not computer scientists, and need to make measurements, control of remote devices to monitor industrial processes, handling of large collections of data, make calculations, of filtering, statistics, can easily make their needs in a Linux environment at low cost.
The simplicity of this language that anyone can understand how it works in a few minutes and totally control a few hours to a week at most. It can also be used more modestly as a super calculator, just to make its accounts or calculations of matrix inversion. The public concerned is very large.
It keeps the forth the following characteristics:
- Mode operation interpretation: as a shell.
- Loading source files and compilation and execution.
- Using stacks (digital, logical and characters) requiring the use of notation called "reverse-Polish."
- How to write new features.
It adds the following possibilities:
- A true "context-free" language to compile code on the fly.
- Installation compatible on all Unix-like systems including Linux.
- Ease of interfacing to additional commands in a program Nife use many free tools available in a Linux environment (eg xgraph).
- Integration of a consistent mathematical library to easily perform calculations on a large number of data.
- Ability to easily add other functions to the base library.
- Automatic recognition of cards or devices compatible with the library COMEDI (http://www.comedi.org) to make data acquisition, signal processing, automatic pilot. This is one of its sides "industrial".
- Variable definition of variable geometry (which may in turn contain a scalar, an array of numeric values, a boolean, a string ...) and can also become executable variables (ie referring to the code that will be called when using the variable). This aspect gives the term Nife dynamic language with all that this implies (code compact and fast, scalable performance).
- Management of multi-tasking with the command task that can initiate parallel execution of functions, control (whether it is complete, refer to the consoles, delete, etc.).
- Nife programs can communicate with each other via the communication tools offered by traditional Unix, internally (within the same system) or external interface based on TCP/IP. For this, it has its own protocol STSP (stack to stack protocol) for exchanging data directly from a numerical stack to an other one. This is one of its aspects "Networking".
- The possible opening towards the use of other devices through the integration of specific drivers.
# How to compile and install nife
Download the nife source code, then:
tar zxvf nife-x.y.z.tar.gz
cd nife-x.y.z
./configure
make
WARNING !! make install is not preconized in beta version !!
You can use it by positionning in the source directory and call the command :
cd src
./nife
You can also lauch the benchmark test :
./test.sh
# Informations
## Web Page
## Mailing List and Bug Reports
nife-project.org hosts all the nife-related mailing-lists.
- help-nife@nife-project.org is for those seeking to get help without wanting to hear about the technical details of its development.
- nife-devel@nife-project.org is the list used by the people that make Nife and a general development discussion list, with moderate traffic.
To subscribe, go directely to : http://nife-project.org/general/newsletter/subone/view-subscribe
For general bug reports, send a description of the problem to nife@seriane.fr or directly to the development list.
nife is still in beta version.
-- Patrick Foubet (patrick.foubet@nife-project.org)