Implementation and Libraries
Factor includes a large standard library, written entirely in the language. These include
- A cross-platform GUI toolkit, built on top of OpenGL and various windowing systems, used for the development environment.
- Bindings to several database libraries, including PostgreSQL and SQLite.
- An HTTP server and client, with the Furnace web framework.
- Efficient homogeneous arrays of integers, floats and C structs.
- A library implementing regular expressions, generating machine code to do the matching.
A foreign function interface is built in to Factor, allowing for communication with C, Objective-C and Fortran programs. There is also support for executing and communicating with shaders written in GLSL.
Factor is implemented in Factor and C++. It was originally bootstrapped from an earlier Java implementation. Today, the parser and the optimizing compiler are written in the language. Certain basic parts of the language are implemented in C++ such as the garbage collector and certain primitives.
Factor uses an image-based model, analogous to many Smalltalk implementations, where compiled code and data are stored in an image. To compile a program, the program is loaded into an image and the image is saved. A special tool assists in the process of creating a minimal image to run a particular program, packaging the result into something that can be deployed as a standalone application.
The Factor compiler implements many advanced optimizations and has been used as a target for research in new optimization techniques.
Read more about this topic: Factor (programming Language)
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