Peter Newman 8 January 2005:
The "Bootstrap File" is a plain ASCII text file that allows the script-level programmer to select the data types and command/functions they want, in their own personal or application specific programming toolkit.
It looks like (for example):-
module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/Tcl.dll (.so on Linux) # module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/C.dll (.so on Linux) # module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/Perl.dll (.so on Linux) # module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/Python.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/Lisp.dll (.so on Linux) # module d:/UPL/lib/interpreters/Scheme.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/dataTypes/integers.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/dataTypes/strings.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/dataTypes/lists/basic.dll (.so on Linux) # module d:/UPL/lib/dataTypes/arrays.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/io/files.dll (.so on Linux) module d:/UPL/lib/io/std.dll (.so on Linux) etc etc
Where module functions pretty much like Tcl's load - and 'loads' the dll/so whoose path follows on the command line.
The "Bootstrap File" is loaded by UPL: The Bootstrap Interpreter.
RS As the script to be executed would know best which modules it needs, I'd propose to put such requirements (à la package require) in the beginning of each app script - but of course this makes boring reading, like a page full of #include in some C sources... Otherwise exchanging scripts between different sites will get difficult.