NAME

nit - interprets and debugs Nit programs.

SYNOPSIS

nit [options] FILE [ARG]...

nit [options] - [ARG]...

nit [options] -e COMMAND [ARG]...

DESCRIPTION

nit is the current official interpreter. It takes the main module of a program as the first argument then the options and commands of the program.

$ nit examples/hello_world.nit
hello world

If - is used instead of a module, then the program is read from the standard input. The whole program is read before its interpretation starts.

The Nit interpreter is usable and valid as a shebang interpreted directive. It is however recommended to use with /usr/bin/env because the location of the executable is not standardized.

#!/usr/bin/env nit
print "hello world"

The interpreter includes an interactive debugger, it supports basic commands used for debugging a program much like GDB or such. See the DEBUGGER section for details.

The behavior of the interpreter may differs slightly from the compiler.

First, the interpreted is the reference implementation for the specification of the Nit language. That means if nitc and nit have a different behavior on a same program, it is likely that nit is right and nitc is wrong.

Second, the FFI is not yet implemented in the interpreter. Only a subset of the standard methods are implemented with some hard-coded behaviors. While it is enough to use most of the standard library, a lot of additional libraries may not be usable by the interpreter.

Last, nit is the Naive Interpretation Tool, it means that it is slow and may take an average of 50.000% in overhead comparatively to nitc(it also means that nitc is fast). In practice, the slowness is not an issue for simple Nit scripts; it is not a big deal if nit takes millisecond to execute programs even if nitc only need microseconds.

OPTIONS

Most options are the same than nitc(1). Here, only the specific one are indicated.

Note that, unlike in other Nit tools, the options MUST be indicated before the main module of a program. Whatever follows it is used as arguments of the interpreted program.

$ nit -e 'print args.first' -v
-v

COMMAND

-e

Specifies the program from command-line.

The -e option runs a program written on the command line. Like with ruby, perl, bash and other script language.

$ nit -e 'print 5+5'
10

-n

Repeatedly run the program for each line in file-name arguments.

If no arguments are given, then nit iterates over the lines of the standard input (stdin).

$ echo "hello world" | nit -n -e 'print sys.line.capitalized'
Hello World

If some arguments are given, then nit considers that each argument is a filepath then it iterates on their lines.

INTERPRETATION OPTIONS

--discover-call-trace

Trace calls of the first invocation of methods.

Each time a method is invoked for the first time, its information is printed on the standard output for error (stderr).

This option helps the user to have a simplified but humanly readable overview of the behavior of a particular program execution.

DEBUGGER OPTIONS

-d

Launches the target program with the debugger attached to it.

-c

Launches the target program with the interpreter, such as when the program fails, the debugging prompt is summoned.

OTHER OPTIONS

--vm

Run the virtual machine instead of the naive interpreter (experimental).

The virtual machine is currently under heavy development and, unless you are developing the vm, there is no reason to use this option yet.

-o

Does nothing. Used for compatibility.

DEBUGGER

To use use the debugger, launch your program using the nit interpreter nit with -d option.

It is also possible to execute the program normally until an error is encountered using the -c option.

A remote debugger is also available, it can be used with the client-side executable nitdbg_client.

On the client side, the debugger works like the previous one, input some commands when debugging a program, except you have to launch the server before trying to debug.

DEBUGGER FEATURES

When using a debugger, a must-have is the possibility to control execution of your program by stepping over, in and out of a line/snippet of code. The nit debugger allows you to do that.

You can add/remove breakpoints on instructions, so that the execution will stop when the execution reaches the specified line of the specified file.

When an error is encountered, the debugger gives you the chance of inputting commands before exiting.

The debugger also gives the possibility of printing the values of the requested variables.

The modification of variables at runtime is possible too, but only if the variables are of primitive types (until it becomes possible).

Also, you probably won't want to type a long variable name every time you wish to print its value, the debugger has the possibility of setting aliases to replace the awfully long and cryptic name of that variable you try to access by a beautiful alias.

If you want to trace the modifications or uses of a variable of your choice, the trace command will be perfect for you as it will print or break when encountering the variable of your choice.

DEBUGGER COMMANDS

n

Proceeds to the next instruction (step-over)

s

Steps in an instruction

finish

Steps out of an instruction

c

Continues the execution until a breakpoint is encountered or until an error/end of program

b/break line_number

Adds a breakpoint on line line_number for the current file

b/break file line_number

Adds a breakpoint on line line_number for the file file (Don't forget to add the .nit extension to the command)

d/delete line_number

Removes a breakpoint on line line_number for the current file

d/delete file line_number

Removes a breakpoint on line line_number for the file file

kill

Kills the current program (produces a stack trace)

variable = value

Sets the value of variable to value (Only supports primitive types for now : Bool, Char, Int, Float)

p/print variable_name

Prints the value of the variable variable_name

p/print stack

Prints a stack trace starting with the current frame

p/print variable_name[index]

Prints the value of the variable contained at the index index of variable variable_name (variable_name must be a subtype of SequenceRead)

p/print variable_name[index_from..index_to]

Prints the values of all the variables contained from index index_from up to index_to in the variable variable_name

All the print commands also work on any dimension SequenceRead collection.

variable_name as alias

Sets an alias alias for the variable variable_name

trace variable_name [break/print]

Traces the uses of the variable you chose to trace by printing the statement it appears in or by breaking on each use. (The [break/print] part is not mandatory, by default, the print option will be used)

untrace variable_name

Removes the trace on the variable you chose to trace earlier in the program