Using Prog

How to actually use Prog.

Introduction

This article describes how to actually use Prog: how to set up the environment and how to use it to create an application.

Installation

To get a copy of the Prog environment set up on your computer, do one of the following:

• Download and run the automated installer.
• Download the runtime archive and extract it to your preferred installation directory.
• Download the source archive and build it yourself.

Option 1 is the easiest, option 2 is mainly for if you can't get option 1 to work right, and option 3 is for if you're mad and like building things from source.

Command-line Options

If Prog is invoked with no command-line options, it grabs whatever Prog source it can get from standard input and executes it as though it were a source file. This allows Prog to receive input from pipes.

Though Prog can be used interactively by invoking it in this manner, it's more convenient to use the -i/--interact option to enable proper interactive mode.

The following command-line arguments are accepted:

• -c file, --compile file

  Compile file to a default-named executable.

• -d, --debug

  Enable the debug pragma.

• -e code, --eval code

  Evaluate code as though it were a one-line source file.

• -?, -h, --help

  Start Prog in help-browsing mode.

• -i, --interact

  Start Prog in interactive mode.

• -o file, --output file

  Specify the output file to use for the next compilation.

• -v, --version

  Display the version string of the Prog executable.

• -w, --warnings

  Enable the warnings pragma.

• file

  Load and execute file

• -

  Open standard input as a file.

Debugging and warnings are activated regardless of where -d or -w appear on the command line. Multiple -c options produce multiple executables; each -o option only affects the output of the -c immediately following it. If -h, -i, or -v is specified, all other options are ignored.