NAME
Oz - Perl interface for executing applications in the Oz programming language
SYNOPSIS
use Oz;
my $code = <<'END_OZ';
{Show "Hello World!"}
END_OZ
# One line idiomatic execution of Oz code.
# Returns the content of STDOUT after the script.
my $stdout = Oz::Script->new( \$script )->run;
# The longhand equivalent of the above.
my $script = Oz::Script->new( \$script );
my $ozc = Oz::Compiler->new( script => $script );
my $output = $ozc->run;
# Generate an executable for the script.
$ozc->make_exe or die "Failed to create executable";
print "Created " . $ozc->main_exe . "\n";DESCRIPTION
Oz is a Perl wrapper for the Oz programming language and the Mozart Oz compiler. It provides a convenient mechanism for taking simple Oz scripts, compiling them, executing them, and capturing the resulting output.
About Oz and Mozart
The Mozart Programming System is an advanced development platform for intelligent, distributed applications. The system is the result of a decade of research in programming language design and implementation, constraint-based inference, distributed computing, and human-computer interfaces.
Mozart is based on the Oz language, which supports declarative programming, object-oriented programming, constraint programming, and concurrency as part of a coherent whole. For distribution, Mozart provides a true network transparent implementation with support for network awareness, openness, and fault tolerance. Mozart supports multi-core programming with its network transparent distribution and is an ideal platform for both general-purpose distributed applications as well as for hard problems requiring sophisticated optimization and inferencing abilities.
Why is Oz.pm needed
In an ideal world, a module wrapper for something as simple as compiling a basic program should not really be necesary. Unfortunately, the dominent toolchain for Oz (the Mozart Programming System) assumes that anyone writing Oz will be using the Emacs editor to do so.
As a result, most tutorial information for beginners does not cover the creation of pure Oz programs, or the compilation of these programs. Instead, it assumes the use of an Emacs specific layer over the top of the language, and covers the execution of any resulting programs exclusively from inside of Emacs.
Oz is a Perl module which simplifies the tortuous and badly documented process of taking pure Oz source code and turning it into an actual working program that you can execute using the underlying ozc compiler.
It is a fairly simple module designed for simple uses of the Oz programming language to solve cross-domain programs that would otherwise be extremely difficult or slow in Perl (such as logic programming or constraint-based programming).
The two interfaces to the Oz compiler are documented below. For the time being the code in the synopsis above should be enough to get you started working with these modules. See the source code to Oz::Compiler or Oz::Script for the full set of supported methods.
Oz::Compiler
The Oz::Compiler module provides an interface directly over the ozc compiler that ships with Mozart.
It provides the basic service for taking Oz scripts in the form of Oz::Script objects and generating command line calls to the compiler to create executable files, as well as the various intermediate "ozf", "ozi", "ozm" forms of the code.
It also provides the ability to execute the resulting executable in a temp directory, returning the output of the program.
Oz::Script
The Oz::Script module provides an abstraction for a single Oz script, either from a location on disk or from an arbitrary string.
It contains a convenience run method which abstracts away dealings with the Oz::Compiler method, so you can take a string of Oz code and execute it directly, returning the output of the program.
SUPPORT
Please note that this module is only a first step at an interface for the Oz programming language and was created to solve a specific limited problem. It is being provided to CPAN as a courtesy and by no means represents a complete work (what function is implemented is however solid and stable).
If you are interested in taking this module beyond the current implementation, I would love to hear from you and would be happy to let you take it over or have commit to the repository.
Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Oz
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A huge thanks to my partner in crime Jeffery Candiloro, who actually had the patience to learn the Oz language enough to write real programs when I was struggling with it, and who wrote all the real Oz code we executed in production with this module.
AUTHOR
Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2011 Adam Kennedy.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.