Distributed under the GNU General Public License, S-Lang refers to a scripting language, as well as a programming library for Unix, Windows, VMS, OS/2, and macOS platforms.
Sometimes referred to, without the hyphen, as Slang, development on S-Lang was begun in 1992 by John E. Davis, who wanted to see how the functions he had written for a text editor might be useful in other programs. The first version of the S-Lang library featured input/output routines for interacting with computer terminals, and an implementation of a stack-based interpreter that had been developed for use in a scientific plotting program.
The JED text editor was the first program to both embed the interpreter and use the terminal I/O components of the library. JED makes extensive use of the S-Lang library and runs on Windows and all of the Unix and Linux-type platforms. Older versions are available for DOS.
Most of the S-Lang library is made up of the interpreter, which is where most of the development takes place. While the original syntax resembled PostScript, more recent versions have evolved into a procedural language with a syntax similar to C, but with support for object-oriented style constructs. The language natively supports array-based operations similar to MATLAB and IDL.
S-Lang was not a standalone program until version 2.0. Rather, it was embedded into applications, such as a C program or other programs, like the JED editor. Version 2.0 made S-Lang an application in its own right, including external modules, becoming the S-Lang interpreter. The S-Lang interpreter supports all of the native C integer types, and both single and double precision types, as well as double-precision complex types, strings, lists, associative arrays, user-defined structures, and multi-dimensional arrays of any datatype.
Topics related to the S-Lang scripting language and programming library, are the focus of resources found in this guide. Any editors, IDEs, or tools created to facilitate programming in S-Lang are appropriate for this category, as are S-Lang user groups, forums, tutorials, and guides.
Recommended Resources
S-Lang as the CIAO Scripting Language
CIAO is the Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations software, which makes use of S-Lang as a scripting language. The reasons for its selection, in 2007, are stated here, beginning with an introduction to the language and its features, particularly as they relate to CIAO, an analysis of other languages that were considered and why they were rejected. Finally, the benefits of S-Lang are given, along with references to S-Lang resources.
http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao3.4/why/slang.html
S-Lang Library Information Page
Now obsolete, but perhaps worthwhile for historical purposes, this is the original official site for the S-Lang multi-platform programmer's library. It includes an overview of the language, library, and the S-Lang interpreter, along with documentation, guides, and references, downloads, and a list of applications that use the S-Lang library in one way or another. Licensure and other resources are included.
http://www.s-lang.org/
The official S-Lang home site presents an overview of the multi-platform programmer's library, the interpreter, and its ability to run in a standalone fashion as well as embedded within a program. A guide to the S-Lang language, an S-Lang Library programmer's guide, intrinsic function reference, modules reference, and C Library references are included, available online or in PDF format. License information and downloads are available.
http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/
From JedSoft, JED is a freely available text editor for BeOS, MSDOS, OS/2, QNX, VMS, and win9X/NT platforms. A powerful editor for programmers, it is also an intuitive text editor. The S-Lang library and S-Lang scripting language are embedded within the editor. Its features are discussed, along with screenshots, and it may be downloaded from the site. A reference manual is posted, and links to additional documentation and resources are provided.
https://www.jedsoft.org/jed/
