Squirrel (programming language)
Squirrel is a high level, imperative, object-oriented programming language. It was designed to be a lightweight scripting language that offers a flexible syntax and high performance.
scripting
imperative
objectoriented
Squirrel: High-Level Programming Language
A lightweight, object-oriented scripting language with a flexible syntax for high-performance applications.
What is Squirrel (programming language)?
Squirrel is a high level, imperative, object-oriented programming language. It was originally designed by Alberto Demichelis in 2003 as the scripting language for the video game Iron Lore Entertainment. The main goals of Squirrel were to create a lightweight scripting language that:
- Has a C-like syntax that is easy to learn for programmers.
- Is high performance with a flexible typing system.
- Integrates well with other programming languages like C++.
- Offers powerful features like object-oriented programming, exceptions, coroutines, and more.
Some key characteristics and capabilities of Squirrel include:
- Procedural and object-oriented programming constructs
- Garbage collection for automatic dynamic memory management
- Lambda expressions and higher order functions
- Powerful standard libraries with containers, iterators, I/O, etc.
- Integration with C++ code for extended functionality
- Embedding and extensibility capabilities as a scripting language
Squirrel has been used across many applications such as video games, graphic applications, automation tools, testing frameworks, and more. Popular applications using Squirrel include game engines like OGRE and creatures AI simulation platform OpenSkyscraper. Overall, Squirrel offers a lightweight, robust, and embeddable scripting language for a variety of domains.
Squirrel (programming language) Features
Features
- High-level imperative object-oriented programming language
- Flexible syntax
- Lightweight
- High performance
- Strongly typed
- Supports classes, inheritance, methods, nested classes
- Integrated with .NET framework
- Can call .NET libraries directly from Squirrel code
- Automatic memory management via garbage collection
- Supports multi-threading
Pricing
- Open Source
Pros
Easy to learn syntax
High performance
Seamless .NET interoperability
Rapid application development
Open source with active community
Cons
Limited adoption outside of niche uses
Less libraries/frameworks than other languages
Still relatively new/unknown
Windows-only
Official Links
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