 | | | Jscript on Linux, a thousand questions | Jscript on Linux, a thousand questions 2004-04-15 - By Matt Lind
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<snip>the next... but honestly, that's good programming edicate anyway.<snip>
but not good spelling: edicate??? ;^D
Matt
Re: Jscript on Linux, a thousand questions
Date : Thu, 15 Apr 2004 14:19:36 -0700
To : XSI(at)Softimage.COM
>From : Bradley Gabe <bgabe(at)ilm.com>
Subject : Re: Jscript on Linux, a thousand questions
I've been programming in jscript on linux for the past year and there are only a
handful of caveats to be mindful of when coming from the windows side:
1- The jscript version (3.0) is older than the windows (5.0+). So you're missing
some functionality on the jscript objects such as string manipulation and array
tools.
These can be easily overcome by extending your jscript object prototypes, which
is documented well enough in the ms online jscript reference.
Less easily overcome is the lack of error handling in jscript version 3.0, so
you're forced to be more careful on how you structure your script logic. I know
I take a lot of special care to check all of my data and pointers from one block
of a script to the next... but honestly, that's good programming edicate anyway.
2- Backslashes are different. Windows only reads 'em one way, linux can handle
either direction (or is it the opposite... I never remember anymore).
3- File I/O on linux isn't as accessible as windows. So just avoid doing
anything that heavily relies on reading in text files and parsing lines into
strings. You can do it, it's just not as fast and robust as it could be.
4- Be wary of string characters for newline (\n) and tab (\t) and such that
might differ between linux and windows. Just make sure to test that they work
cross platform before using them.
Everything else is the same... in fact, you can be mostly sure that anything you
build on the linux side will work on windows. This is not as true the other way
around.
To answer some of your questions more directly:
Is this still the case? if yes, what's the equivalent of
var ch_stuff = new ActiveXObject("XSI.collection") ;
in Jscript on Linux ?
The same command works on linux. I use it at least a dozen times a day while
coding.
What about file I/O? starting a shell command and returning from the shell?
are these issues easier to address with ActivePython? As I understand, it is
truly "Active" only in Windows...
I've run commands through an external shell using the System() call in XSI.
These commands were written in Python, so any functionality you don't get for
file I/O out of jscript or ActivePython within XSI, you can always build them
externally and just call them into your script that way.
All things considered, I've been treating my switch to the linux version of
jscript as lemonade from lemons. The lack of more complete jscript objects
forced me to learn how to push jscript to the limits and extend the
functionality of the language itself, and I'm certainly better off for that
knowledge now as I use it all over the place, above and beyond my original
intentions.
Also, the lack of error handling has forced me to learn scripting techniques
that are more robust, ways of hooking into objects without ever risking raising
an error. For doing all of that research, I've developed a much deeper
understanding on how to navigate and hook into the object model and get things
done, even in places we're "not supposed to go" yet.
Best of all, it's turned me into a speed demon. I have an array of techniques
that can walk a script through a scene with 2000 nodes and filter out any info I
need in less than a tenth of a second. That means I can build interactive tools
without having to resort to external SDK coding... but that's next anyways.
-Brad
--
Bradley R. Gabe
Industrial Light & Magic
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