---> Is this the latest version of Euphoria?
      Visit:  http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
      
 ---> To install/uninstall Euphoria, see install.htm
      
 ---> What's new in this release?
      See relnotes.doc 

 

Welcome to Euphoria! ...

End User Programming with Hierarchical Objects for Robust Interpreted Applications

Euphoria has come a long way since v1.0 was released in July 1993. There are now well over a thousand registered users, located in 61 countries around the world, as well as many thousands of non-registered users. There's a Euphoria newsgroup, alt.lang.euphoria, as well as an automated mailing list with over 400 users subscribed. The Euphoria Web site contains over 1100 contributed .zip files packed with Euphoria source programs and library routines. Dozens of people have set up their own independent Web pages with Euphoria-related content. Euphoria has been used in a variety of commercial programs. The Windows version has been used to create numerous GUI, utility and Internet-related programs. The DOS version has been used to create many exciting high-speed action games, complete with Sound Blaster sound effects. The Linux and FreeBSD versions have been used to write X Windows GUI programs, CGI programs, and lots of useful tools and utilities.

Yet Another Programming Language?

Euphoria is a very-high-level programming language with several features that set it apart from the crowd:

• Euphoria programs run on Windows, DOS, Linux, and FreeBSD.

• The language is flexible, powerful, and easy to learn.

• There is no waiting for compiles and links - just edit and run.

• You can create and distribute a royalty-free, stand-alone .exe file.

• Dynamic storage allocation is fundamental to Euphoria. Variables grow or shrink in size without the programmer having to worry about allocating and freeing chunks of memory. Elements of an array (Euphoria sequence) can be a dynamic mixture of different types and sizes of data.

• Euphoria provides extensive run-time error checking for: out-of-bounds subscripts, uninitialized variables, bad parameter values for library routines, illegal value assigned to a variable, and many more. If something goes wrong you'll get a full error message, with a call traceback and a listing of variable values. With other languages you'll typically get protection faults with useless dumps of machine registers and addresses.

• The Euphoria interpreter is more than 30 times faster than either Perl or Python, and it's considerably faster than all other interpreted languages, according to the "Great Computer Language Shootout" benchmark (see demo\bench\bench.doc). And if that isn't enough, there's a Euphoria To C Translator that can boost your speed even more. Why waste time debugging hand-coded C/C++, when Euphoria programs are so much easier to develop?

• Euphoria programs are not constrained by any 640K or 64K memory restrictions for which MS-DOS is infamous. The DOS32, WIN32, Linux and FreeBSD versions of Euphoria let you use all of the megabytes of memory on your system seamlessly, and if that isn't enough, a swap file on disk will provide additional virtual memory.

• An integrated, easy-to-use, full-screen source-level debugger/tracer is included.

• Both an execution-count profiler, and a time profiler are available.

• There is a large and rapidly growing collection of excellent 3rd party programs and libraries, most with full source code.

• RDS has developed an extremely flexible database system (EDS) that runs identically on all Euphoria platforms.

• The WIN32 implementation of Euphoria can access any WIN32 API routine, as well as C or Euphoria routines in .DLL files. A team of people has developed a Windows GUI library (Win32Lib), complete with a powerful Interactive Development Environment. You can design a user interface graphically, specify the Euphoria statements to be executed when someone clicks, and the IDE will create a complete Euphoria program for you. There are Windows Euphoria libraries for Internet access, 3-D games, and many other application areas.

• The DOS32 implementation of Euphoria on MS-DOS contains a built-in graphics library. If necessary, you can access DOS software interrupts. You can call machine-code routines. You can even set up your own hardware interrupt handlers. Many high-speed action games, complete with Sound Blaster sound effects, have been developed 100% in Euphoria, without the need for any machine code.

• The Linux and FreeBSD implementations of Euphoria let you access C routines and variables in shared libraries, for tasks ranging from graphics, to X windows GUI programming, to Internet CGI programming. The good news is, you'll be programming in Euphoria, not C.

• Euphoria is written in C. The source code is available for just $49. You can enhance it, give your source enhancements back to RDS, or even sell your enhanced binary version. See the Source License.

Who Would Benefit from Using Euphoria?

	novices / students	-	Euphoria is one of the simplest and easiest of all languages to learn.
	hobbyists	-	Visit the Web site and check out the huge variety of cool games and other programs. Most were written by hobbyists. Almost all Euphoria programs are open source, and you can learn a lot by tinkering with them.
	professionals	-	You can develop a reliable, maintainable, fully-debugged program in much less time in Euphoria than in C/C++.
		-	Euphoria is great for quick, easy development of file filters and other utilities.
		-	You can easily develop GUI and Internet programs without needing a 6-week training course.
		-	You can distribute your Euphoria programs royalty-free as a .exe file.
		-	You can get a copy of the Euphoria interpreter source. You'll be certain that your Euphoria applications can be maintained indefinitely, and you'll be able to modify the interpreter to suit your specialized needs.
		-	RDS has been in business for 10 years, and with hundreds of people on the Euphoria mailing list, you'll be assured of a source of technical support.

Platforms and Editions

Euphoria runs on four different platforms, WIN32, DOS32, Linux, and FreeBSD. This is the main Euphoria Interpreter package. There is also a Euphoria To C Translator package on our Web site, which consists of a few extra files.

This Euphoria Interpreter package comes in two different editions: a Public Domain Edition and a Complete Edition. The Complete (registered) Edition has these extra features:

• You can shroud (encrypt) and bind any Euphoria program with the Euphoria interpreter to create a single, stand-alone, tamper-resistant .exe file for easy distribution. (See bind.doc)

• You can profile any Euphoria program to determine the performance "hot spots" and to find logical errors. Both execution-count profiling and time-profiling (DOS32 only) are provided.

• You can use the trace (full-screen interactive debugger) facility to help you debug any size of program. The Public Domain Edition also provides tracing, but only for programs up to 300 statements in size. (Blank-lines and comments are not counted as statements.) With either Edition, you will always get a full error report, with variable values and call stack, whenever you have a run-time error.

We want you to enjoy writing some great programs in Euphoria. Later, when you decide that you like the language, and want to take advantage of the enhanced features in the Complete Edition, we hope you will register. Registration of the Interpreter package costs only $29 (DOS32+WIN32+Linux+FreeBSD), and you can reduce or even eliminate this cost by contributing useful code for our Web site. See register\register.doc for details.

There is also a free version of the Euphoria To C Translator that you can download from our Web site. The full version of the Euphoria To C Translator costs only $29. See the Translator package on our Web site for details.

The documentation contained in this package comes in both plain text and HTML form. The plain text (.doc) files can be viewed with any text editor, such as Windows NotePad or WordPad. The HTML (.htm) files can be viewed with your Web browser. A tool that we developed in Euphoria allows us to automatically generate both plain text and HTML files, from a common source. Thus the content of each file in the doc subdirectory should be identical to the content of the corresponding file in the html subdirectory, aside from the lack of links, fonts, colors, etc. See doc\overview.doc (or html\overview.htm) for a summary of the documentation files.

You can freely distribute this Public Domain Edition, in whole or in part, so anyone can run a Euphoria program that you have developed. You are completely free to distribute any Euphoria programs that you write, royalty-free, even if you don't register.

To run the WIN32 version of Euphoria you need Windows 95, or any later version of Windows. It runs fine on XP.

The DOS32 version will run on any version of Windows, and will also run on plain DOS on any 386 or higher processor. Contrary to popular opinion, DOS is not dead. You can run DOS Euphoria programs on Windows XP in a command prompt window.

To run the Linux version of Euphoria you need any reasonably up-to-date Linux distribution, that has libc6 or later plus ncurses. For example, Red Hat 5.2 or later will work fine.

To run the FreeBSD version of Euphoria you need any reasonably up-to-date FreeBSD distribution, that has ncurses.

Getting Started

1.	After you install Euphoria, the documentation files will be in the doc and html directories. overview.doc gives an overview of the documentation. refman.htm (or refman.doc) should be read first. If you want to search for information on any topic, type guru.
2.	Have fun running the programs in the demo directory. Feel free to modify them, or run them in trace mode by adding:
	with trace trace(1)
	as the first two lines in the .ex or .exw file.
3.	Try typing in some simple statements and running them. You can use any text editor. Later you may want to use the Euphoria editor, ed, or download David Cuny's Euphoria editor from the Euphoria Web site. Don't be afraid to try things. Euphoria won't bite!
4.	See what2do.doc for more ideas.
5.	Visit the Euphoria Web site, download some files, and subscribe to the Euphoria mailing list.

If you are new to programming, and you find refman.htm hard to follow, download David Gay's interactive tutorial called "A Beginner's Guide To Euphoria". It's in the Documentation section of our Archive.

Notice to Shareware Vendors:

We encourage you to distribute this Public Domain Edition of Euphoria. You can charge whatever you like for it. People can use Euphoria for as long as they like without obligation. We make money from those who start to seriously develop large applications, and want technical support plus enhanced bind, profile, and trace support for large programs.

DISCLAIMER:

The Public Domain and Complete Editions of Euphoria are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. In no event shall Rapid Deployment Software be held liable for any damages arising from the use of or inability to use this product.