Introduction
Proteus was initially created as a multiplatform (DOS, Windows, Unix) system utility, to manipulate text and binary files and to create CGI scripts. The language was later focused on Windows, by adding hundreds of specialized functions for: network and serial communication, database interrogation, system service creation, console applications, keyboard emulation, ISAPI scripting (for IIS). Most of these additional functions are only available in the Windows flavour of the interpreter, even though a Linux version is still available.
Proteus was designed to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete), readable and consistent.
Its strongest points are:
The language can be extended by adding user functions written in Proteus or DLLs created in C/C++.
Language features
At first sight, Proteus may appear similar to Basic because of its straight syntax, but similarities are limited to the surface:
- Proteus has a fully functional, procedural approach;
- variables are untyped, do not need to be declared, can be local or public and can be passed by value or by reference;
- all the typical control structures are available (if-then-else; for-next; while-loop; repeat-until; switch-case);
- new functions can be defined and used as native functions.
Data types supported by Proteus are only three: integer numbers, floating point numbers and strings. Access to advanced data structures (files, arrays, queues, stacks, AVL trees, sets and so on) takes place by using handles, i.e. integer numbers returned by item creation functions.
Type declaration is unnecessary: variable type is determined by the function applied – Proteus converts on the fly every variable when needed and holds previous data renderings, to avoid performance degradation caused by repeated conversions.
There is no need to add parenthesis in expressions to determine the evaluation order, because the language is fully functional (there are no operators).
Proteus includes hundreds of functions for:
- accessing file system;
- sorting data;
- manipulating dates and strings;
- interacting with the user (console functions)
- calculating logical and mathematical expressions.
Proteus supports associative arrays (called sets) and AVL trees, which are very useful and powerful to quickly sort and lookup values.
Two types of regular expressions are supported:
- extended (Unix like);
- basic (Dos like, having just the wildcards "?" and "*").
Both types of expressions can be used to parse and compare data.
The functional approach and the extensive library of built-in functions allow to write very short but powerful scripts; to keep them comprehensible, medium-length keywords were adopted.
The user, besides writing new high-level functions in Proteus, can add new functions in C/C++ by following the guidelines and using the templates available in the software development kit; the new functions can be invoked exactly the same way as the predefined ones, passing expressions by value or variables by reference.
Proteus is an interpreted language: programs are loaded into memory, pre-compiled and run; since the number of built-in functions is large, execution speed is usually very good and often comparable to that of compiled programs.
One of the most interesting features of Proteus is the possibility of running scripts as services or ISAPI scripts.
Running a Proteus script as a service, started as soon as the operating system has finished loading, gives many advantages:
- no user needs to log in to start the script;
- a service can be run with different privileges so that it cannot be stopped by a user.
This is very useful to protect critical processes in industrial environments (data collection, device monitoring), or to avoid that the operator inadvertently closes a utility (keyboard emulation).
The ISAPI version of Proteus can be used to create scripts run through Internet Information Services and is equipped with specific functions to cooperate with the web server.
For intellectual property protection Proteus provides:
- script encryption;
- digital signature of the scripts, by using the development key (which is unique);
- the option to enable or disable the execution of a script (or part of it) by using the key of the customer.
Proteus is appreciated because it is relatively easy to write short, powerful and comprehensible scripts; the large number of built-in functions, together with the examples in the manual, keep low the learning curve.
The development environment includes a source code editor with syntax highlighting and a context-sensitive guide. Proteus does not need to be installed: the interpreter is a single executable (below 400 Kb) that does not require additional DLLs to be run on recent Windows systems.
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