It’s under the shell
Ah the shell… The ones who never use one have no idea how powerful and easy it can be. As programmers we are already use to typing commands to perform tasks, so what is holding you from using one? PPL 2.0 is full of visual UI features, everything is made to be easy, however the IDE hides a series of very powerful features that can be accessed:
- The Shell of course
- The IDE API (access tons of PIDE features from PPL directly)
- The Plug-ins engine (add custom menu items anywhere with toolbar buttons)
- The code editor (manual coding)
- PIDE supported files are XML based
I could go on and on… Let’s come back to the Shell. The Shell is inspired by many shells, 4NT, TCC, Bash, Command.com, MacOSX Terminal and some others.
It has a very open architecture, but here are the main features that we believe will wet your appetite:
- Command history accessible with UP/DOWN keys
- Adjustable buffer size, colors, update delays, etc…
- Aliases, create custom command aliases
- Customize search paths using the “path” command or by editing the “Path.txt” file.
- You can create batch files (.shl)
- Write PPL code and get result instantly
- Pass PPL code as parameters. Ex: open {“file” + “.txt”}
- The “open” command opens files directly in the PIDE or using the default Windows program.
- Run .SHL, .PPL, .EXE files directly.
- Tons of very advanced commands from Compress, Crypt, Touch, Find, Grep, Crc
- Powerful “pkg” command to allow you to handle package files (add, delete, list, extract, etc…)
Of course the shell is a young feature and will improve immensively with future releases allowing you to do more advanced work.
Ok, I have to go back to some beta testing reports which I haven’t gone through yet, done worry, I am hard at work…
Oh yeah, I am trying to finish up the debugger watches, it is taking more time than expected…
