Forums Developers Standalone Script Engine

Hmm, I guess you mean like UTF-8 Multi network connections, and many other of the things implemented in mIRC?

i'd like to point out that i myself once made a script for mirc that would rename files based on info in a file. used in yearbook class with lifetouch's cd that had a easy to script database file with the pictures being named with the same numbers in the database. the script was made to change the filenames of the pictures to name - grade.JPG. why did i do this in mirc and not tcl or php? 2 words "limited account". i could grab upp and code in mirc without installing anything on my schools limited non-admin account. last i checked you cant do that in tcl.

and im the same kind of coder that made a half-assed version of a wircd in mirc, a mp3 player that didn't use /splay, a web browser based off of ie. hell a mci based video player. yes, im the type of coder that loves /dll and $dll() why dont i do this on tcl with the load unload commands? do you know of a tcl dll/so for internet control interface? or mci? or using winamp's input/output dlls? i dont.

why would i like to see mcl standalone? because its easy, it would hopfully be usable on a limited user system without admin access and because it has a higher amount of dll addon's

You can. You can also do it in Python, Ruby, Lua, Perl or just about any interpreted language since all you need is theinterpreter.exe and some dlls. It would be easier, too, since you wouldn't need to interact with mIRC's UI to do it. The only thing you can't do on a limited account is install programs-- but this is a moot point, since mIRC needs an installer too unless you preinstalled it on a CD or usb key (which you could do with Tcl as well).



If by "internet control" you mean sockets, Tcl has plenty of this; so do Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.. In fact, sockets in most of these other languages are significantly easier to use than mIRC. I mean, seriously, compare any mIRC HTTP GET script with:



No comparison. Heck, compare it with full xml processing:



Returns all the <a> links in your HTML document. This would require many lines of mIRC scripting, and we haven't even done any processing on this data yet.

As far as "winamp input/output dlls" go, this has nothing to do with mIRC. These dlls are specifically made to address a shortcoming in mIRC. Winamp accepts SendMessage commands the same way mIRC does, but mIRC has no way of *sending* those commands without dlls, so plugins in Winamp need to be made to send the commands to mIRC. Other languages like Python, Tcl, Ruby, all have WINAPI implementations that allow users to use SendMessage from the language to interact with Winamp directly, so a "winamp plugin for LANGUAGE_X" is completely unnecessary.

In short, and I hate to say it, but most of the need for mIRC script as a standalone language is caused by ignorance of better tools. mIRC is not fast, it's not easier to perform any complex tasks (sockets, xml, large string processing, binary data processing, WINAPI, dialogs all have much better library support in other dynamic languages), it doesn't even have good debugging. The only time mIRC is more convenient than other languages is when dealing with IRC related commands and events because of its event oriented nature and lack of a string construct (respectively). That makes it great for an IRC client, but that's it.

If you're comfortable with mIRC because you only know mIRC, that's one thing, but if you've only used mIRC and are convinced it can solve all of the worlds problems, you need to get out from under your rock and start looking (harder) for more appropriate tools.

This is quite possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever read. The fact that you would spend 4 days database writing code in mIRC that you could have probably done in Perl or C# in 12 hours is a complete joke.

Listen to what the others say: the mIRC scripting language was designed so that mIRC could be further customised. Why would any real programmer choose mIRC to program with, when they could use, say, PHP and have arrays to work with (even if PHP is a POS)? To put it another way, I could spend 2 weeks writing an intel x86 assembly interpreter in mIRC (and I think I will), but what's the point when Delphi already provides? One should choose a language that is suitable for the task, and mIRC is one of the least suitable I've seen for database work.

mIRC supports dialogs; what about arrays, and other data structures? support for multithreaded programming? what about those things that are required to be a -real- programming language? mIRC couldn't even compete with VB6, and nobody uses VB6 anymore. Here's an idea: give Ruby or ECMAScript 20 minutes worth of play, then come back and tell me how much you love mIRC.


Wrong. Languages do not know of "admin account". They do not have such restrictions. If you can find an implementation of a language that will run on an underprivileged user account, you can fiddle with it. TCL will run on an underprivileged account. Again, I could spend a month writing a TCL interpreter in mIRC just to prove you wrong...


hmm, and what did you use to write the DLL/COM object? I'm pretty sure, since most TCL interpreters are written in C, loading DLL/COM objects would be easy enough to do don't you think?



Yes, well... 1 URL: http://tryruby.sophrinix.com/ (and it'll run on a limited account, right in your browser! don't worry!)