CINT

Encyclopedia : C : CI : CIN : CINT

CINT is a command line C/C++ interpreter that is included in the object oriented data analysis package ROOT. Although intended for use with the other faculties of ROOT, CINT can also be used as a standalone addition to another program that requires such an interpreter.

CINT is an interpreted version of C or C++, much in the way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java. In addition to being a language interpreter, it offers certain bash-like shell features such as history and tab-completion. To accomplish the latter, it relies heavily on the reflection support built into ROOT. User classes that follow these interfaces may also take advantage of these features.

The language interpreted by CINT is actually somewhat of a hybrid between C and C++, covering about 95% of ANSI C and 85% of C++. The syntax, however, is a bit more forgiving than either language. For example, the operator -> can be replaced by . with only an optional warning. In addition, statements on the command line do not need not end with a semi-colon, although this is necessary for statements in macros.

One of the most frustrating and confounding features of CINT is that instances of classes that derive from TNamed, which includes all of the standard classes of ROOT, can be accessed by their name rather than a variable.

Criticisms

Much like ROOT, in which it is embedded, CINT attracts much criticism:

it implements such an incomplete subset of C++ that valid C++ code cannot be expected to run under CINT
failures may not be immediately evident, but may lead to undefined behaviour at arbitrary points during script execution
CINT's "forgiving" implementation of C++ syntax encourages users to write non-compliant C++, complete with pointer/object ambiguities and missing line terminators. CINT scripts are hence non-trivial to convert to compilable C++

For these reasons, it is considered by some that rather than an accurate C++ interpreter, CINT can be viewed as a non-deterministic interpreter for an ill-defined macro language whose syntax and behaviour bears a rough, but inaccurate, similarity to C++.

External links

[Introduction, tutorial, and documentation]

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