1falcon(1) Falcon User Manuals falcon(1)
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6 falcon - The Falcon Programming Language command line interpreter
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10 falcon [options] [main_script] [script_options]
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14 The falcon command line interpreter is used to launch, compile, assem‐
15 ble or debug scripts written in the Falcon Programming Language. The
16 command line interpreter pushes the core module and the rtl module in
17 the script load table, so they are available by default to all the
18 scripts.
19 The default operation is that of launching the given script, or read it
21 from the standard input if the script name is not given. By default,
22 falcon saves also the compiled module of the script in the same direc‐
23 tory where it is found, changing the extension to ".fam".
24 The main_script can be a "logical" module name, a relative path or an
26 absolute path. In case it's a logical module name, that is, a script
27 name without extension nor leading path, it is searched through the
28 load path. The default load path is determined by the compilation
29 options of the interpreter, and usually it includes the current direc‐
30 tory. The environment variable FALCON_LOAD_PATH and the command line
31 option -L can change the default module search path.
32 When the main module is found, its path is added to the module search
34 path; in other words, there isn't any need to specify the path contain‐
35 ing the main module to have other modules in its same directory to get
36 loaded. The main module and other source Falcon module it loads can be
37 stored in a directory that is not listed in the module search path;
38 indicating an absolute or relative path as the main_script parameter
39 will add that path on top of the active search path.
40 If not differently specified, falcon will search for .fam modules newer
42 than the relative .fal source scripts and will load those ones instead
43 of compiling the sources.
44 Options past the script name will be directly passed in the args[]
46 global variable of the script.
47 The interpreter is compatible with the UNIX script execution directive
49 "#!". A main script can have on the very first line of the code the
50 directive
51 #!/path/to/falcon
53 to declare to the shell that the falcon command line is to be loaded.
55 If falcon command line interpreter is also in the system PATH environ‐
56 ment variable, which is usually the case of a normal installation, then
57 the interpreter directive may also be simply
58 #!/bin/env falcon
60 It is then simply necessary to make the main script executable with
62 chmod 744 script_name
64 to be able to call the script directly.
66 Scripts executed in this way will add their path to the falcon module
68 load path as soon as they are loade, so other modules referenced by
69 them will be searched in the directory where they resides before being
70 searched elsewhere.
71 Options to the falcon compiler may be passed normally by writing them
73 after the execution directive in the main script.
74 Since version 0.8.12, the falcon command line interpreter has also an
76 interactive mode which accepts statements and provide results as the
77 expressions are evaluated.
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82 -c Compile but do not execute. This makes falcon to compile the
83 given module into a .fam file and then terminate. By default,
84 the .fam file is written to a file with the same name as the
85 input one, with the .fam extension.
86 -C Check for memory leaks in VM execution. Like the -M option of
88 faltest, this function sets the falcon engine memory allocators
89 to slower functions that checks for memory to be allocated and
90 deallocated correctly during the execution of a module. If the
91 script is executed, before Falcon exits it writes a small report
92 to the standard output.
93 -d <directive>=<value>
95 Sets the given directive to the desired value. Compilation
96 directives and their values are the ones that scripts can set
97 through the directive statement.
98 -D <constant>=<value>
100 Sets the given constant to the desired value. Constants are made
101 available at compile time, and can be employed in macro and meta
102 compilation.
103 -e <enc>
105 Set given encoding as default for VM I/O. Unless the scripts
106 select a different I/O encoding, the streams that are provided
107 to the falcon VM (like the output stream for printf) are encoded
108 using the given ISO encoding. This overrides the default encod‐
109 ing that is detected by reading the environment settings. In
110 example, if your system uses iso-8859-1 encoding by default, but
111 you want your script to read and write utf-8 files, use the
112 option -e utf-8
113 The -e option also determines the default encoding of the source
115 files. To override this, use -E
116 -E <enc>
118 Set source script encoding. As -e , but this determines only the
119 encoding used by falcon when loading the source scripts. This
120 options overrides -e values, so it can be used to set the script
121 encoding when they have to read and write from different encod‐
122 ings.
123 -f Force recompilation of modules even when .fam are found.
125 -h or -?
127 Prints a brief help on stdout and exits.
128 -h or -?
130 Interactive mode. Falcon interpreter reads language statements
131 from a prompt and present evaluation results to the user.
132 -l <lang_code>
134 Select a different language code for internationalized programs.
135 This option loads an alternate string table for all the modules
136 loaded. If the table doesn't exist or if the modules doesn't
137 have a .ftr file containing the translation, the operation
138 silently files and the original strings are used instead. Lan‐
139 guage codes should be in the international ISO format of five
140 characters with a language name, an underscore and the regional
141 code, like in en_US
142 -L <path>
144 Changes the default load path. This overrides both the internal
145 built in settings and the contents of environment variable FAL‐
146 CON_LOAD_PATH. Each directory in the path should be separated by
147 ";" and use forward slashes, like this:
148 falcon -L
150 -m Use temporary files for intermediate steps. By default compila‐
153 tion is completely performed in memory; this option makes falcon
154 to use temporary files instead.
155 -M Do NOT save the compiled modules in '.fam' files.
157 -o <fn>
160 Redirects output to <fn>. This is useful to control the output
161 of falcon when using options as -c, -a, -S etc. If <fn> is a
162 dash (-) the output is sent to stdout.
163 -p <module>
165 Preloads the given module as if it were loaded by the main
166 script.
167 -P Ignore default load paths and uses only the paths set via the -L
169 switch.
170 -r Ignore source files and only use available .fam. This does not
172 affects the main script; use the -x option if also the main
173 script is a pre-compiled .fam module and source script must be
174 ignored.
175 -S Produce an assembly output. Writes an assembly representation of
177 the given script to the standard output aznd the exit. Use -o to
178 change file destination.
179 -t Generates a syntactic tree of the source and writes it to the
181 standard output, then exits. The syntactic tree is a representa‐
182 tion of the script that is known by the compiler and used by the
183 generators to create the final code. This option is useful when
184 debugging the compiler and to test for the correct working of
185 optimization algorithm.
186 -T Force input parsing as .ftd (Falcon Template Document). Nor‐
188 mally, only files ending with ".ftd" (case sensitive) are parsed
189 as template document; when this switch is selected, the input is
190 treated as a template document regardless of its name.
191 -v Prints copyright notice and version and exits.
193 -w After execution, requires the user to confirm program termina‐
195 tion by pressing <enter>. This helps in point & click environ‐
196 ments, where Falcon window is closed as soon as the program ter‐
197 minates.
198 -x Executes a pre-compiled .fam module.
200 -y Creates a template file for internationalization. This option
202 creates a single .ftt file from a single source, .fam module or
203 binary module. By default, the name of the template is the same
204 as the module plus ".temp.ftt" added at the end; it is possible
205 to change the destination template file using the -o option.
206
209 /usr/lib/libfalcon_engine.so
210 Default location of the Falcon Engine loadable module.
211 /usr/lib/falcon
213 Default directory containing Falcon binary modules.
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217 FALCON_LOAD_PATH
218 Default search path for modules loaded by the scripts.
219 FALCON_SRC_ENCODING
222 Default encoding for the source scripts loaded by falcon (when
223 different from the system default).
224 FALCON_VM_ENCODING
227 Default encoding for the VM I/O streams (when different from
228 system default).
229
232 Giancarlo Niccolai <gc@falconpl.org>
233
236 falrun(1) faldisass(1) fallc.fal(1)
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240 This document is released under the "GNU Free Documentation License,
241 version 1.2". On Debian systems, the complete text of the Free Docu‐
242 mentation License, version 1.2, can be found in /usr/share/com‐
243 mon-licenses/.
244Falcon toolset April 2007 falcon(1)