1. Success at last...thank you all
- Posted by dstanger at belco.bc.ca
May 03, 2001
Hello all and thank you for your help.
At last I have gotten everything under control. I have the editor working, I
am running programs, and I am finally writing my own code. Thank you
everyone for your assistance!
I have some questions about Euphoria that I am sure any of you can answer:
(1) I am unfamiliar with the concept of include files. I see get.e in one of
the tutorial files that allows the use of prompt_number(). Could someone
please tell me a little about what include files are and how they work? Why
are they necessary? What other include files are there in Euphoria?
(2) How does one learn all of the various commands for Euphoria? The
documents with the program only explain a little bit and other than picking
through the tutorials and demos (which is fun but I am already half way
through them) how does one learn? How did you all learn?
(3) What are libraries? They seem to be a common topic in the forum. Could
someone please explain what they are and how they are used. They seem like
something that you can create for yourself which sounds intriguing.
That is all that I can think of for now. Thanks for all of your help and
support. I am really starting to take a shine to Euphoria.
David
2. Re: Success at last...thank you all
- Posted by DanMoyer at PRODIGY.NET
May 03, 2001
David,
1. include files are files which can contain a variety of individual
functions or procedures or even constant or variable declarations; when
those files are "included" in your program by the "include" command, the
procedures or functions or constants or variables in that include file are
then made available for your program to use. The interpreter "merges" the
include file with your program, pretty much. Let's say someone writes a
bunch of useful functions, and then instead of re-typing all or selected
ones of them into each new program they write, they wrote them all into one
file, called it an "include", and then just have to write "include xyz.ew"
in any program in order to make any/all those routines available to that
program.
2. I think the standard advice would be: read the docs, review the
examples, look at what others have done in the archives at RDS website,
write simple programs, ask questions here, write more programs, ask more
questions....
3. Libraries are, I think, "super" include files, which add a *bunch* of
additional facilities to Euphoria. Win32Lib, for example, makes programming
for Windows *much* easier than using "straight" Euphoria. You use them just
like a regular include file, first by "including" them in your program, then
by using whichever commands (functions and procedures) implemented in them
you need.
Dan Moyer
>
> Hello all and thank you for your help.
>
> At last I have gotten everything under control. I have the editor working,
I
> am running programs, and I am finally writing my own code. Thank you
> everyone for your assistance!
>
> I have some questions about Euphoria that I am sure any of you can answer:
>
> (1) I am unfamiliar with the concept of include files. I see get.e in one
of
> the tutorial files that allows the use of prompt_number(). Could someone
> please tell me a little about what include files are and how they work?
Why
> are they necessary? What other include files are there in Euphoria?
>
> (2) How does one learn all of the various commands for Euphoria? The
> documents with the program only explain a little bit and other than
picking
> through the tutorials and demos (which is fun but I am already half way
> through them) how does one learn? How did you all learn?
>
> (3) What are libraries? They seem to be a common topic in the forum. Could
> someone please explain what they are and how they are used. They seem like
> something that you can create for yourself which sounds intriguing.
>
> That is all that I can think of for now. Thanks for all of your help and
> support. I am really starting to take a shine to Euphoria.
>
> David
>
>
3. Re: Success at last...thank you all
David,
----- Original Message -----
From: <dstanger at belco.bc.ca>
To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
Subject: Success at last...thank you all
> I have some questions about Euphoria that I am sure any of you can answer:
>
> (1) I am unfamiliar with the concept of include files. I see get.e in one
of
> the tutorial files that allows the use of prompt_number(). Could someone
> please tell me a little about what include files are and how they work?
Why
> are they necessary? What other include files are there in Euphoria?
Include files are, logically enough, files containing source code that, when
invoked from other files, are merged with the caller. See refman.doc 1.3,
"Running a program". Include files distributed with Euphoria reside in the
\include directory (look at them), but of course anyone can write them. The
.e suffix is Euphoria's convention for include files (C uses .h, and so on).
They are not necessary at all, just convenient, since they allow you to
store standard code you will often want to use in your programs.
> (2) How does one learn all of the various commands for Euphoria? The
> documents with the program only explain a little bit and other than
picking
> through the tutorials and demos (which is fun but I am already half way
> through them) how does one learn? How did you all learn?
How do you think? While some of us had a background in other languages, or
even formal studies, that eased our way into Euphoria, the basic and only
way is to read the docs, try out what you read, test, crash, correct, test
again and so on until your eyes burn out and your fingers fall off. Of
course, there are several good tutorials around (see the RapidEuphoria
site), and it's always useful to look at other people's code, mostly trying
to figure out what they did and how they did it.
> (3) What are libraries? They seem to be a common topic in the forum. Could
> someone please explain what they are and how they are used. They seem like
> something that you can create for yourself which sounds intriguing.
Library is a generic term for code storage external to your program. Include
files are a special case: source libraries. When libraries are mentioned,
it's generally assumed they are compiled. They may or may not be written in
the same language. Windows dlls are libraries. You have to know the name of
a routine contained in a library, the parameters you should pass it and what
it will return to your program, all of which should be documented.
> That is all that I can think of for now. Thanks for all of your help and
> support. I am really starting to take a shine to Euphoria.
>
> David
David, if you're just beginning to get into programming, Euphoria is a very
good way to do it. However, Euphoria is a language, not a generic
programming course. You might find it convenient to read a couple or three
books on programming. My suggestion is to try to be as unspecific as you
can, i.e. don't assume that programming means Windows programming, or Unix
programming, much less Visual Basic or C or Delphi. It may appear a little
boring at first, but there's always something new to learn.
Personally, I prefer books, paper books. Unfortunately, they tend to be
large and expensive, so maybe you could try your hand with some of the many
online books and tutorials you can find on the Net. If I were you, I would:
a) Use a search engine and ask for "Learn programming." My favorite search
engines are www.northernlight.com, www.alltheweb.com and www.google.com, but
there are dozens, if not hundreds around. No doubt everybody will have a
recommendation for you.
b) Go to the big developer sites, and look around. Most carry tutorials on
this and that. You can't lose.
Gerardo
4. Re: Success at last...thank you all
On Thu, 3 May 2001 dstanger at belco.bc.ca wrote:
> (2) How does one learn all of the various commands for Euphoria? The
> documents with the program only explain a little bit and other than picking
> through the tutorials and demos (which is fun but I am already half way
> through them) how does one learn? How did you all learn?
Speaking strictly for myself, I can't learn anything except by doing it.
For example, I was not able to learn carpentry until I started doing it.
Books alone were not enough. Same for every subject. I couldn't learn
math until I applied the math in math problems. Same for physics. Same
for programming languages. I read a bunch of books about Pascal, but I
didn't know how to program in Pascal until I started making programs in
Pascal. Same for C. Same for everything I ever learned, with the
possible exception of when I was much younger.
Euphoria followed the same pattern.
A Theory: Psychologists tell us there is short term memory and long
term memory. It seems (in my case at least) for any information to go
from short term memory to long term memory, it has to be applied.
Of course you don't really need to remember everything when you can use
the F1 key or have a documentation file handy.
My way of learning is: not how to memorized it, but how to apply it.
If I don't apply it, it never sticks in my memory, no matter how many
times I memorize it. For learning a programming language, this means
learn the language by making programs in it.
Jerry Story
