Clipper (Programming Language) - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Appeared in 1985

Stable release CA Clipper 5.3b (May 20, 1997)

OS DOS

http://www.grafxsoft.com/clipper.htm

Clipper

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clipper is a computer programming language that is used tocreate software programs that originally operated primarilyunder DOS. Although it is a powerful general-purposeprogramming language, it was primarily used to createdatabase/business programs.

1 History2 Programming in Clipper3 Version history4 External links

Clipper was originally created in 1985 as a compiler for dBASE III, a very popular database language at thetime. Compiling dBASE code changes it from interpreted code, which must be interpreted every time each lineof code is executed, to p-code, which uses a Virtual Machine to process the compiled p-code. p-code isconsiderably faster, but still not as fast as the machine code generated by native compilers. As a technicalmarketing ploy, the p-code was wrapped into object code (linkable .obj files) which gave the impression that itwas compiled to native code. Clipper was created by Nantucket Corporation led by Barry ReBell (management)and Brian Russell (technical), and later sold to Computer Associates. GrafX Software licensed CA-Clipper in2002 from CA for ongoing marketing and distribution.

As the product matured, it remained a DOS tool for many years, but added elements of the C programminglanguage and Pascal programming language, as well as OOP, and the code-block data-type (hybridizing theconcepts of dBase macros, or string-evaluation, and function pointers), to become far more powerful than theoriginal. Nantucket's Aspen project later matured into the Windows native-code Visual Objects compiler.

The Clipper language is being actively implemented and extended by multiple organizations/vendors, likeXBase++ from Alaska Software and FlagShip, as well as free (GPL-licensed) projects like Harbour andxHarbour.

Many of the current implementations are portable (DOS, Windows, Linux (32- and 64-bit), Unix (32- and64-bit), and Mac OS X), supporting many language extensions [1] (http://www.xharbour.org/index.asp?page=product/extensions), and have greatly extended runtime libraries, as well as variousReplaceable Database Drivers (RDD) supporting many popular database formats, like DBF, DBTNTX,DBFCDX (FoxPro, Apollo, Comix, and Advantage Database Server), MachSix (SIx Driver and Apollo), SQL,and more. These newer implementations all strive for full compatibility with the standard dBase/xBase syntax,while also offering OOP approaches and target-based syntax such as SQLExecute().

The Clipper Usenet newsgroups are comp.lang.clipper (http://groups.google.com/group

Clipper (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_(programming_language)

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/comp.lang.clipper) and comp.lang.clipper.visual-objects (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.clipper.visual-objects).

A simple hello world - application:

? "Hello World!"

A simple data base input mask:

USE Customer SHARED NEWclear@ 1, 0 SAY "CustNum" GET Customer->CustNum PICT "999999" VALID Customer->CustNum > 0@ 3, 0 SAY "Contact" GET Customer->Contact VALID !empty(Customer->Contact)@ 4, 0 SAY "Address" GET Customer->AddressREAD

The various versions of Clipper were

From Nantucket Corporation; the "seasonal versions", billed as "dBase compilers"

Nantucket Clipper Winter'84 - released May 25, 1985Nantucket Clipper Summer'85 - released 1985Nantucket Clipper Winter'85 - released January 29, 1986Nantucket Clipper Autumn'86 - released October 31, 1986Nantucket Clipper Summer'87 - released December 21, 1987

From Nantucket Corporation; Clipper 5

Nantucket Clipper 5.00 - released 1990Nantucket Clipper 5.01 - released April 15, 1991Nantucket Clipper 5.01 Rev.129 - released March 31, 1992

and from Computer Associates; CA-Clipper 5

CA Clipper 5.01a -CA Clipper 5.20 - released February 15, 1993CA-Clipper 5.2a - released March 15, 1993CA Clipper 5.2b - released June 25, 1993CA-Clipper 5.2c - released August 6, 1993CA Clipper 5.2d - released March 25, 1994CA-Clipper 5.2e - released February 7, 1995


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CA Clipper 5.30 - released June 26, 1995CA Clipper 5.3a - released May 20, 1996CA Clipper 5.3b - released May 20, 1997

Alaska Software (http://www.alaska-software.com/) vendor of XBase++Apollo database engine supports CA-Clipper and FoxPro data files (http://www.vistasoftware.com/)Free Open Source Graphic,GUI & Form Designer for CA-Clipper (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/fglib)mini Clipper FAQ (http://www.davep.org/clipper/)Print from Clipper to newest Windows printers (http://www.printfil.com/article/clipper-print-windows-printer.htm) articleThe Oasis (http://www.the-oasis.net/) is the largest file archive for CA-Clipper and xBase on the webVisual FlagShip Clipper compatible compiler for Linux, Unix and Windows (http://www.fship.com/)Xailer (http://www.xailer.com) Integrated development environment for WindowsHarbour Project (http://www.harbour-project.org) A 32/64 bit multiplatform Clipper compilerFrom CA-Clipper to Windows in 5 minutes (http://raumi75.jimdo.com/2010/02/27/from-ca-clipper-to-windows-in-5-minutes/) How to install Harbour MiniGUI and compile a windows-exe.DBFree (http://www.dbfree.org) - xBase interpreter for the web (adds xBase/Clipper server-side scriptingto IIS / Apache / Xitami web servers)The NTK Project (http://www.ntkproject.com/), WIN32 Gui Framework for (x)Harbour, backwardcompatible with Clipper and Clip4Win.

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Clipper (Programming Language) - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia