[Contents]

1. Introduction

1.1. Chapters

This documentation has four main chapters. These are

• Interpreter Architecture describes the overall architecture of the interpreter, lists the different modules, and contains the reference documentation of the C functions implemented in the individual modules.

• Embedding the Interpreter describes how to write an application that embeds The ScriptBasic interpreter. This chapter also contains the reference documentation of the full C API.

• Extension Modules describes what extension modules are, how to use them and how to write extension modules that may provide access to special programs, operating system features, and are not implemented in the interpreter core.

• Preprocessors detail how to write preprocessor extensions to ScriptBasic. These extensions provide development functionalities like debugging, profiling and processing of the source code in addition to the processing of the interpreter.

• Compilation details how to compile ScriptBasic under Windows NT and under UNIX. This could be the first chapter in this document, but actually this got to the last place. This does not mean that this is the least important issue. This is just the fact that I believe that this book is not something that you read in the bed evening before falling asleep. For one reason that this is not boring, is it? Another reason is that you do not read is chapter by chapter in sequential order. Thus feel free to jump to this section if you need.