path: root/doc/lib.txt

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

:Author: Andreas Rumpf
:Version: |nimrodversion|

.. contents::

  "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 changing
  case of a string, splitting a string into substrings, searching for
  substrings, replacing substrings.

* `parseutils <parseutils.html>`_
  This module contains helpers for parsing tokens, numbers, identifiers, etc.

* `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.

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

* `ropes <ropes.html>`_
  This module contains support for a *rope* data type.
  Ropes can represent very long strings efficiently; especially concatenation
  is done in O(1) instead of O(n).

* `unidecode <unidecode.html>`_
  This module provides Unicode to ASCII transliterations:
  It finds the sequence of ASCII characters that is the closest approximation
  to the Unicode string.


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 applications.

* `scgi <scgi.html>`_
  This module implements helpers for SCGI applications.

* `sockets <sockets.html>`_
  This module implements a simple portable type-safe sockets layer.

* `browsers <browsers.html>`_
  This module implements procs for opening URLs with the user's default
  browser.

* `httpserver <httpserver.html>`_
  This module implements a simple HTTP server.

* `httpclient <httpclient.html>`_
  This module implements a simple HTTP client.

* `smtp <smtp.html>`_
  This module implement a simple SMTP client. 
  

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.

* `json <json.html>`_
  High performance JSON 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.


XML Processing
--------------

* `xmldom <xmldom.html>`_
  This module implements the XML DOM Level 2.

* `xmldomparser <xmldomparser.html>`_
  This module parses an XML Document into a XML DOM Document representation.

* `xmltree <xmltree.html>`_
  A simple XML tree. More efficient and simpler than the DOM. It also
  contains a macro for XML/HTML code generation.

* `xmlparser <xmlparser.html>`_
  This module parses an XML document and creates its XML tree representation.

* `htmlparser <htmlparser.html>`_
  This module parses an HTML document and creates its XML tree representation.


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.

* `base64 <base64.html>`_
  This module implements a base64 encoder and decoder.


Multimedia support
------------------

* `colors <colors.html>`_
  This module implements color handling for Nimrod. It is used by
  the ``graphics`` module.



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

Regular expressions
-------------------

* `re <re.html>`_
  This module contains procedures and operators for handling regular
  expressions. The current implementation uses PCRE.


Database support
----------------

* `db_postgres <db_postgres.html>`_
  A higher level PostgreSQL database wrapper. The same interface is implemented
  for other databases too.

* `db_mysql <db_mysql.html>`_
  A higher level MySQL database wrapper. The same interface is implemented
  for other databases too.

* `db_sqlite <db_sqlite.html>`_
  A higher level SQLite database wrapper. The same interface is implemented
  for other databases too.


Other
-----

* `graphics <graphics.html>`_
  This module implements graphical output for Nimrod; the current
  implementation uses SDL but the interface is meant to support multiple
  backends some day.

* `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.

* `ssl <ssl.html>`_
  This module provides an easy to use sockets-style 
  Nimrod interface to the OpenSSL library.


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.

Windows specific
----------------

* `windows <windows.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the Win32 API.
* `ole2 <ole2.html>`_
  Contains GUIDs for OLE2 automation support.
* `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.
* `nb30 <nb30.html>`_
  This module contains the definitions for portable NetBIOS 3.0 support.


UNIX specific
-------------

* `posix <posix.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the POSIX standard.
* `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.


Regular expressions
-------------------

* `pcre <pcre.html>`_
  Wrapper for the PCRE library.
* `tre <tre.html>`_
  Wrapper for the TRE library.


Graphics libraries
------------------

* `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.

* `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.

* `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.


GUI libraries
-------------
* `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.
* `iup <iup.html>`_
  Wrapper of the IUP GUI library.


Database support
----------------

* `postgres <postgres.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the PostgreSQL API.
* `mysql <mysql.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the mySQL API.
* `sqlite3 <sqlite3.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for SQLite 3 API.
* `odbcsql <odbcsql.html>`_
  interface to the ODBC driver.


XML Processing
--------------

* `expat <expat.html>`_
  Wrapper of the expat XML parser.


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

* `libcurl <libcurl.html>`_
  Contains a wrapper for the libcurl library.

* `openssl <openssl.html>`_
  Wrapper for OpenSSL.


Scripting languages
-------------------

* `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.


Data Compression and Archiving
------------------------------

* `zlib <zlib.html>`_
  Wrapper for the zlib library.

* `libzip <libzip.html>`_
  Interface to the `lib zip <http://www.nih.at/libzip/index.html>`_ library by
  Dieter Baron and Thomas Klausner.