path: root/doc/lib.txt

=======================
Nimrod Standard Library
=======================

:Author: Andreas Rumpf
:Version: |nimrodversion|

..

  "The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one."

Though the Nimrod Standard Library is still evolving, it is already quite
usable. It is divided into *pure libraries*, *impure libraries* and *wrappers*.

Pure libraries do not depend on any external ``*.dll`` or ``lib*.so`` binary 
while impure libraries do. A wrapper is an impure library that is a very
low-level interface to a C library.

Read this `document <apis.html>`_ for a quick overview of the API design.


Pure libraries
==============

Core
----

* `system <system.html>`_
  Basic procs and operators that every program needs. It also provides IO
  facilities for reading and writing text and binary files. It is imported
  implicitly by the compiler. Do not import it directly. It relies on compiler
  magic to work.

* `macros <macros.html>`_ 
  Contains the AST API and documentation of Nimrod for writing macros.


String handling
---------------

* `strutils <strutils.html>`_
  This module contains common string handling operations like converting a
  string into uppercase, splitting a string into substrings, searching for
  substrings, replacing substrings.

* `strtabs <strtabs.html>`_
  The ``strtabs`` module implements an efficient hash table that is a mapping
  from strings to strings. Supports a case-sensitive, case-insensitive and
  style-insensitive mode. An efficient string substitution operator ``%``
  for the string table is also provided.

* `unicode <unicode.html>`_ 
  This module provides support to handle the Unicode UTF-8 encoding.

* `regexprs <regexprs.html>`_
  This module contains procedures and operators for handling regular
  expressions. Consider using `pegs` instead.

* `pegs <pegs.html>`_
  This module contains procedures and operators for handling PEGs.


Generic Operating System Services
---------------------------------

* `os <os.html>`_
  Basic operating system facilities like retrieving environment variables,
  reading command line arguments, working with directories, running shell
  commands, etc.

* `osproc <osproc.html>`_
  Module for process communication beyond ``os.execShellCmd``.

* `times <times.html>`_
  The ``times`` module contains basic support for working with time.

* `dynlib <dynlib.html>`_
  This module implements the ability to access symbols from shared libraries.

* `streams <streams.html>`_
  This module provides a stream interface and two implementations thereof:
  the `PFileStream` and the `PStringStream` which implement the stream
  interface for Nimrod file objects (`TFile`) and strings. Other modules
  may provide other implementations for this standard stream interface.

* `terminal <terminal.html>`_
  This module contains a few procedures to control the *terminal* 
  (also called *console*). The implementation simply uses ANSI escape 
  sequences and does not depend on any other module.


Math libraries
--------------

* `math <math.html>`_
  Mathematical operations like cosine, square root.

* `complex <complex.html>`_
  This module implements complex numbers and their mathematical operations.



Internet Protocols and Support
------------------------------

* `cgi <cgi.html>`_
  This module implements helpers for CGI applictions. 


Parsers
-------

* `parseopt <parseopt.html>`_
  The ``parseopt`` module implements a command line option parser. This
  supports long and short command options with optional values and command line
  arguments.

* `parsecfg <parsecfg.html>`_
  The ``parsecfg`` module implements a high performance configuration file
  parser. The configuration file's syntax is similar to the Windows ``.ini``
  format, but much more powerful, as it is not a line based parser. String
  literals, raw string literals and triple quote string literals are supported
  as in the Nimrod programming language.

* `parsexml <parsexml.html>`_
  The ``parsexml`` module implements a simple high performance XML/HTML parser. 
  The only encoding that is supported is UTF-8. The parser has been designed
  to be somewhat error correcting, so that even some "wild HTML" found on the 
  web can be parsed with it.

* `parsecsv <parsecsv.html>`_ 
  The ``parsecsv`` module implements a simple high performance CSV parser.
  
* `parsesql <parsesql.html>`_
  The ``parsesql`` module implements a simple high performance SQL parser.

* `lexbase <lexbase.html>`_
  This is a low level module that implements an extremely efficient buffering
  scheme for lexers and parsers. This is used by the diverse parsing modules.


Code generation
---------------

* `xmlgen <xmlgen.html>`_
  This module implements macros for XML/HTML code generation.


Cryptography and Hashing
------------------------

* `hashes <hashes.html>`_
  This module implements efficient computations of hash values for diverse
  Nimrod types.

* `md5 <md5.html>`_
  This module implements the MD5 checksum algorithm.



Impure libraries
================

* `dialogs <dialogs.html>`_
  This module implements portable dialogs for Nimrod; the implementation
  builds on the GTK interface. On Windows, native dialogs are shown if
  appropriate.

* `zipfiles <zipfiles.html>`_
  This module implements a zip archive creator/reader/modifier.
  
* `web <web.html>`_
  This module contains simple high-level procedures for dealing with the
  web like loading the contents of a web page from an URL.


Wrappers
========

The generated HTML for some of these wrappers is so huge, that it is
not contained in the distribution. You can then find them on the website.

* `posix <posix.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the POSIX standard.
* `windows <windows.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the Win32 API.
* `mysql <mysql.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the mySQL API.
* `sqlite3 <sqlite3.html>`_ 
  Contains a wrapper for SQLite 3 API.
* `libcurl <libcurl.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the libcurl library.
* `shellapi <shellapi.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the ``shellapi.h`` header.
* `shfolder <shfolder.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the ``shfolder.h`` header.
* `mmsystem <mmsystem.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the ``mmsystem.h`` header.
* `ole2 <ole2.html>`_
  Contains GUIDs for OLE2 automation support.
* `nb30 <nb30.html>`_
  This module contains the definitions for portable NetBIOS 3.0 support.
* `cairo <cairo.html>`_
  Wrapper for the cairo library.
* `cairoft <cairoft.html>`_
  Wrapper for the cairoft library.
* `cairowin32 <cairowin32.html>`_
  Wrapper for the cairowin32 library.
* `cairoxlib <cairoxlib.html>`_
  Wrapper for the cairoxlib library.
* `atk <atk.html>`_
  Wrapper for the atk library.
* `gdk2 <gdk2.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gdk2 library.
* `gdk2pixbuf <gdk2pixbuf.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gdk2pixbuf library.
* `gdkglext <gdkglext.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gdkglext library.
* `glib2 <glib2.html>`_
  Wrapper for the glib2 library.
* `gtk2 <gtk2.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gtk2 library.
* `gtkglext <gtkglext.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gtkglext library.
* `gtkhtml <gtkhtml.html>`_
  Wrapper for the gtkhtml library.
* `libglade2 <libglade2.html>`_
  Wrapper for the libglade2 library.
* `pango <pango.html>`_
  Wrapper for the pango library.
* `pangoutils <pangoutils.html>`_
  Wrapper for the pangoutils library.
* `gl <gl.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `glext <glext.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `glu <glu.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `glut <glut.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `glx <glx.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `wingl <wingl.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for OpenGL.
* `lua <lua.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for Lua.
* `lualib <lualib.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for Lua.
* `lauxlib <lauxlib.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for Lua.
* `tcl <tcl.html>`_ 
  Wrapper for the TCL programming language.
* `python <python.html>`_
  Wrapper for the Python programming language.
* `odbcsql <odbcsql.html>`_
  interface to the ODBC driver.
* `zlib <zlib.html>`_
  Wrapper for the zlib library. 
* `sdl <sdl.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `sdl_gfx <sdl_gfx.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `sdl_image <sdl_image.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `sdl_mixer <sdl_mixer.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `sdl_net <sdl_net.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `sdl_ttf <sdl_ttf.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `smpeg <smpeg.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for SDL.
* `cursorfont <cursorfont.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `keysym <keysym.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `x <x.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xatom <xatom.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xcms <xcms.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xf86dga <xf86dga.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xf86vmode <xf86vmode.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xi <xi.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xinerama <xinerama.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xkb <xkb.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xkblib <xkblib.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xlib <xlib.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xrandr <xrandr.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xrender <xrender.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xresource <xresource.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xshm <xshm.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xutil <xutil.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xv <xv.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `xvlib <xvlib.html>`_
  Part of the wrapper for X11.
* `libzip <libzip.html>`_
  Interface to the `lib zip <http://www.nih.at/libzip/index.html>`_ library by
  Dieter Baron and Thomas Klausner.