Squirrel is a high level imperative/OO programming language, designed to be a light-weight scripting language that fits in the size, memory bandwidth, and real-time requirements of applications like video games.

Language features

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• dynamic typing
• delegation
• classes & inheritance
• higher order functions
• generators
• cooperative threads(coroutines)
• tail recursion
• exception handling
• automatic memory management (primarily reference counting with backup garbage collector)
• weak references
• both compiler and virtual machine fit together in about 6k lines of C++ code.
• optional 16bits characters strings

Syntax

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Squirrel uses a C-like syntax

Factorial in Squirrel:

function factorial(x) { if (x == 0) { return 1; } else { return x * factorial(x-1); } } Random numbers using generators: function gen_random(max) { local last=42 local IM = 139968; local IA = 3877; local IC = 29573; for(;;) { //loops forever yield (max * (last = (last * IA + IC) % IM) / IM); } } local randtor = gen_random(100); for(local i = 0; i < 10; i += 1) print(">"+resume randtor+"\n");

Classes and inheritance:

class BaseVector { constructor(...) { if(vargc >= 3) { x = vargv^*; y = vargv^*; z = vargv^*; } } x = 0; y = 0; z = 0; } class Vector3 extends BaseVector { function _add(other) { if(other instanceof this.getclass()) return ::Vector3(x+other.x,y+other.y,z+other.z); else throw "wrong parameter"; } function Print() { ::print(x+","+y+","+z+"\n"); } } local v0 = Vector3(1,2,3) local v1 = Vector3(11,12,13) local v2 = v0 + v1; v2.Print();

History

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The language was made public in 2003 under the zlib/libpng license. It is developed and maintained by Alberto Demichelis.

See also

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• Lua programming language
• Python programming language
• Ruby programming language

External links

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• Squirrel Home Page
• SquirrelWiki

Procedural programming languages | Programming languages | Object-oriented programming languages | Scripting languages

Squirrel