“Edmond Breen’s EiC (Embeddable/Extensible Interactive C) is
an open source program that provides one of the most complete and
well-designed language interpreters we’ve ever seen. Supported
platforms include Linux, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and
32-bit Windows. In fact, EiC is so rich in function that only a
taste of its capabilities can be presented in this review.”
“EiC compiles C code into an intermediate bytecode on the fly
and then executes it. Unlike Java’s, this two-stage process is
completely invisible to the programmer. More interesting is that
EiC provides three different ways to run C code: You can run it as
a normal C program, as a script file, or in interactive mode. The C
program mode is what you would expect — you invoke EiC and pass it
the name of the C program to run, along with parameters to pass to
the program, and it does so.”
“The script-file capability is particularly useful for Linux
users, since it provides virtually 100 percent compatible C
capabilities in a scripting language, as well as CGI compatibility.
The most intriguing option is the interactive mode, which lets you
hoist headers into the namespace; define constants, variables, and
functions; invoke functions; assign values to variables; and
generally turn your Linux system into a C machine.”