Amazon.com Review
It's easy to get intimate with certain programming languages and not keep a lookout for new and powerful ones on the horizon.
REBOL: The Official Guide raises awareness of this fascinating new programming language that is well suited particularly for CGI scripting on the Web.
"If you know other languages," the foreword implores the reader, "forget them while you learn REBOL." REBOL breaks the rules of traditional languages, employing seamless machine independence, broad data typing, and denotational semantics--a mathematically based foundational concept. With such an introduction, what self-respecting programmer wouldn't be intrigued and motivated to read on?
As REBOL is introduced in the following chapters, its developer's admonition seems less and less like hyperbole. The concepts of vocabularies and series--which enable logical organization of data for use in REBOL--are explained. Such familiar concepts as functions, objects, and data types are illustrated; nearly all of these inspire interesting twists when they are applied to REBOL.
A video store example serves as a tutorial on the construction of a sophisticated object-oriented solution that interfaces with a back-end database. Near the end of the book, the focus turns to one of REBOL's more intriguing features: its inherent support for such high-level Internet protocols as FTP, HTTP, NNTP, POP, SMTP, and others. Here, the applicability of the language to the Web becomes obvious. A CD-ROM includes REBOL and the scripts from the book.
Whether or not REBOL is the right language for your production-level development, its unique architecture and networkability warrant a serious look; it might just change the way you view programming languages in general. --Stephen W. Plain
Topics covered:
- Words and data types
- Series
- Functions and program structuring
- Debugging
- Objects and contexts
- Database access
- CGI implementation
- Internet protocol support
- REBOL ports
- REBOL dialecting
From the Back Cover
The ONLY official guide to REBOL! Master REBOL—the exciting new machine-independent messaging language—with help from this authorized resource. REBOL: The Official Guide covers all important aspects of REBOL with complete, step-by-step instructions and real-world code examples. You’ll find all the information you need on multi-platform network and Internet programming, datatypes, functions, debugging, parsing, objects, and ports. A distributed database management system and consumer database dialect are developed to implement an Internet store. A time-saving CD-ROM with the full distribution of REBOL, a sample script library, and all of the ready-to-use programming examples from the book is also included. Learn to: Install and configure REBOL and the REBOL interpreter Write, debug, and deploy robust, platform-independent REBOL applications Employ values, words, datatypes, blocks, and REBOL functions Solve problems and return results using advanced Internet programming techniques Use domain-specific dialecting to exchange concepts and data Collect and extract online information Navigate interactively through objects using an object navigator Synchronize objects and database records
