C/C++ interpreter Ch 5.5, and Embedded Ch 5.5 Released

CGIDir
Monday, October 16, 2006; 06:13 AM

SoftIntegration, Inc. announced the availability of Ch 5.5 and Embedded Ch 5.5. Ch is an embeddable C/C++ interpreter for cross-platform scripting, 2D/3D plotting, numerical computing, shell programming and embedded scripting.

Ch and Embedded Ch version 5.5 are the most stable release. The new release mainly added Embedded Ch function callback features, more C99 features, and powerful new plotting capabilities, Ch Professional Edition supports smooth surface mesh for 3D plotting. The view angle of 3D plots can be changed and coordinates of 2D plots can be tracked by a mouse. Ch Professional Edition is now supported in QNX. This release also fixed many reported bugs.

"Ch is an excellent environment for research and teaching. I use it for research and teaching on mechatronics and control," said Professor David Auslander at the University of California at Berkeley. "To me the main advantage of an interpreter is portability. Ch allows C programs to be executed portably across different platforms. In addition, a major advantage of Ch is its user-friendly mathematical and graphical infrastructure. Getting that in C, C++ or Java requires assembling a large collection of libraries from a variety of sources, each with its own quirks. I am very impressed with the salient graphical plotting capabilities in Ch version 5.5. They are easy to use and very useful for applications in engineering and science."

"We greatly appreciate the power and flexibility of a C interpreter bring to the simulation and design of power electronics and motor drive systems," added Hua Jin, president of Powersim Inc. "PSIM from Powersim Inc. is specifically developed for simulation and design of power electronics and motor drive systems. An embedded C interpreter makes it extremely easy to write C code in PSIM without the need of a separate C compiler. The response from our customers on the C Script Block in PSIM, powered by the Embedded Ch interpreter, is very good. Thank you for a well-developed product."

Below is a list of Ch major features.

C/C++ interpreter

Ch supports 1999 ISO C Standard (C99) and C++ classes. Ch also supports many industry standards with over 8,000 functions, including POSIX, socket/Winsock, X11/Motif, OpenGL, ODBC, C LAPACK, GTK+, Win32, XML, and CGI. With built-in Ch SDK, functions in static or dynamic binary C/C++ libraries can be executed in Ch script file or Ch command shell without re-compilation. Programs can also be developed and executed using a number of user-friendly Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as ChSciTE.

Embeddable scripting

Ch is easy and simple for embedded scripting. Embedded Ch allows users to embed Ch into C/C++ application programs and hardware as a scripting engine. It is ideal for open-architecture application integration. With Embedded Ch, C/C++ applications can be extended with all features of Ch. It allows execution of C/C++ scripts generated dynamically. Embedded Ch supports multi-threading and has a small footprint. The pointer and time deterministic nature of the C language provides a perfect interface with hardware in real-time systems.

Shell programming and cross-platform scripting

Ch shell is C compatible shell while C-shell (csh) is a C like shell. Ch is an interpretive implementation of C, similar to Unix/MS-DOS shells. Ch in Windows includes over 200 commonly used Unix commands for portable shell programming. Ch can also be used as a login shell just like sh, csh and ksh. Ch bridges the gap between the C language and shell languages. With its built-in string type and many enhanced scripting features, Ch is an alternative to other scripting languages for automating repetitive tasks, regression test, and hardware testing with direct interface to hardware.

2D/3D plotting

Ch graphical extensions are the best choice for plotting in the C/C++ domain. Ch supports high-level 2D/3D graphical plotting. Two and three dimensional graphical plots can be very easily accomplished. Plots in Ch can be generated from data arrays or files, and can be displayed on a screen, saved as an image file in a variety of ifferent file formats, or output to the stdout stream in a proper image format for display in a Web browser through a Web server. With SoftIntegration graphical library (SIGL), the same program using 2D/3D plotting features can be executed in Ch or compiled using C++ compilers without any modification.

Numerical computing

Ch numerical extensions are the best choice for numerical computing in the C/C++ domain. Ch has built-in generic mathematical functions and computational arrays for linear algebra and matrix computations. It contains advanced high-level numerical functions for linear systems, differential equation solving, integration, non-linear equations, Fourier analysis, curve fitting, etc. For example, linear system equation b = A*x can be written verbatim in Ch. Ch supports C LAPACK, GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, and GNU Scientific Library. Applications written using these libraries can be executed in Ch or compiled using C compilers without any modification.

Ch toolkits and third party software support

Ch is ideal for rapid application development and deployment. Ch supports an increasing number of third party software applications. It includes Ch Control toolkit, Ch Mechanism Toolkit, Ch NAG Statistics Package, Ch CGI toolkit, Ch ODBC toolkit, Ch XML toolkit, ChExcel for manipulating Microsoft Excel in C/C++ scripts, Intel OpenCV for computer vision, ImageMagick for image processing, National Instruments' data acquisition toolkit NI-DAQ and motion control toolkit NI-Motion.

Pricing and Availability

Ch and Embedded Ch for Windows, Linux x86, Linux PPC, Mac OS X, Solaris, HP-UX, FreeBSD and QNX Neutrino RTOS are available. Ch Standard Edition is free for both commercial and non-commercial uses in all platforms. Ch Professional Edition is free for academic use and costs $199 for personal or commercial use. To purchase Embedded Ch, contact SoftIntegration directly.