What is Pike?
Pike is an interpreted, object-oriented programming language. It looks a bit like C and C++, but it is much easier to learn and use. It can be used for small scripts as well as for large programs.

• High-level and powerful, which means that even very complex things are easy to do in Pike,
• Object-oriented, which means that you can use modern programming techniques to divide a large program into small pieces, which are much easier to write than it would be to write the entire program at once,
• Interpreted, which means that you don’t have to wait for a program to compile and link when you want to run it,
• One of the fastest “scripting” languages available,
• Garbage-collected, which makes programming much simpler, and also removes the risk for memory leaks and other memory-related bugs,
• Easy to extend, which means that you can create plug-ins, written in Pike as well as in C or C++, and integrate them with the rest of Pike.

Pike can be used to write small and simple scripts, and also for very large programs: the World Wide Web servers Roxen WebServer and Caudium are both written in Pike. Pike’s advanced data types and built-in support for sockets makes it ideal for use in Internet applications.

Pike is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Mozilla Public License (MPL). Pike is available for many operating systems, among them Linux, Solaris, OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Pike and Some Other Languages

• C++ and C

Pike looks a lot like C++ on the surface, but is easier and safer to use. Since it is interpreted, it may be slower for some applications. Pike is more flexible than C++, and allows for a somewhat less rigid programming style than what is necessary in C++. Another difference is that there are many different C and C++ compilers, while there is only one implementation of Pike.

• C#

Pike is very similar to C#. In fact, one could easily think that some engineers at Microsoft and the other companies behind C# were Pike users. The most noticable difference between the two is probably that Pike has better standard types than C# and doesn’t require the use of libraries for type conversions et c. If you are using C#, you will find Pike very easy to use.

• Java

Pike looks a bit like Java on the surface. Like Java, Pike is translated to an intermediate format, which is then executed by an interpreter. Java programs are usually distributed to the user in this intermediate format, but with Pike we use the source code. This is feasible since compilation time, i e the time it takes to translate the program to the intermediate format, is near zero in Pike.

• Perl

Perl started on Unix systems as a system administration tool. Both Pike and Perl are good at handling strings, and both can be used to add functionality to web servers. Perl is much more widely used than Pike. Some programmers feel that the syntax of Perl is obscure.

• Python

Programs written in Python look very different from Pike programs, but Python and Pike are similar when it comes to ideas and use. Python is more widely used and has more libraries available. Pike on the other hand is faster, has a more advanced type system, and has better support for object-oriented programming. Pike’s more C++-like syntax makes it easier to get started with for programmers who know C++, C or Java.

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Industry :

Information technology