Difference between revisions 2132746 and 2133009 on enwiki

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ARS plus plus

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== History ==
'''ARS++''' has been developed in 2002 for the book ''Undiluted Programming'' (  a description of the book is available on page [http://www.lambda-bound.de/book/engl/index.html]) to demonstrate '''ARS based programming''' in a real world context. <br>                                  ARS++ is used in thePrincipally the programming language Scheme would have been perfect to achieve that goal if Scheme would include primitives supporting  network programming, database programming plus a few others required in this real world context. <br>
The definition of the programming language Scheme does not include those primitives leaving this issue up to the implementors of the language. The consequence is that there exist many Scheme implementations, almost none of them covering all areas essential for real application programs.<br>
This is the historical background that gave birth to the development of ARS++.

A few weeks ago the author of the mentioned book  discovered a Scheme implementation that would have been perfectly suited to serve as a  language for developing  the case studies for 'Undiluted Programming'.  This Scheme implementation is called ''Gauche'' and is available for download on page [http://www.shiro.dreamhost.com/scheme/gauche/].

ARS++ is used in the mentioned book to implement an ''A++ interpreter'' and  an ''XML Database''. TheEven ''implementation of ARS++ in C'' was used to demonstrate ARS based programming in C. 
                                                                                                           
== ARS++ explained by its name ==
The name '''ARS++''', being an acronym for ''ARS + Scheme + Extensions'', indicates that ARS++ has a lot to do with [[Scheme_programming_language |Scheme ]] but that it is ''not equivalent to Scheme''.

** The '''first part''' of the name refers to the core of  the language, which is nothing else but [[A_plusplus |A++]], i.e. ''Abstraction + Reference + Synthesis''. <br> The structure of A++ however is different from the structure of Scheme, which can be verified by comparing the ''definition of Scheme in R5RS'' with the ''definition of A++'' on page [http://www.lambda-bound.de/book/lambdacalc/node41.html] and the following.
** The '''second part''' in the name of ARS++ stands for the ''primitive functions'' that are ''imported from Scheme'', giving ARS++ almost the same functionality of Scheme. <br> Primitive functions are those, that are not and ''cannot be defined as lambda abstractions'' because they are representing a functionality that can only be provided by the unde rlying ''operating system'' or the ''hardware''.
** The '''third part''' of the name refers to ''primitive functions'' that are ''not defined in R5RS'' (the official definition of the programming language Scheme) but are nevertheless important for real world programming like functions allowing to work with ''regular expressions'', with ''TCP/IP networks'', with ''embedded databases'' (e.g. Berkeley DB, GNU database manager) and a few that provide an ''interface with the operating system''.

From a ''practical point of view'' a Scheme implementation that
includes support for regular expressions, databases, sockets and
also provides an interface to the operating system can be
called an ARS++ language (ignoring the difference in the
nucleus which practically is only noticed by the programmer
when using the special form ''define'').