C++ Portable Types Library (PTypes) 2.0.2 review

PTypes (C++ Portable Types Library) is a simple alternative to the STL that includes multithreading and networking

License: zlib/libpng License File size: 219K Developer: Hovik Melikyan

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PTypes (C++ Portable Types Library) is a simple alternative to the STL that includes multithreading and networking. It defines dynamic strings, variants, character sets, lists and other basic data types along with portable thread and synchronization objects, IP sockets and named pipes. Its main `target audience' is developers of complex network daemons, robots or non-visual client/server applications of any kind.

PTypes defines simple and intuitive interfaces and differs from the STL in fairly moderate use of templates. The library is portable across many modern operating systems (currently FreeBSD, Linux, SunOS, Mac OS X and Windows). All platform-dependent issues are hidden inside. A simple web server called wshare is included in the package to demonstrate the full power of the library.

And finally, PTypes is open and free.

Here are some key features of "C plus plus Portable Types Library PTypes":
Threads and synchronization primitives solve the vital problem of diversity of the threading API's on different platforms. The library also offers message queues and job queues as additional methods of thread synchronization and maintenance.
IP socket classes and utilities provide complete IP-based framework for both client-side and server-side programming. Combined with PTypes multithreading, these classes can be used for designing complex non-visual applications, such like network daemons or web robots.
Dynamic strings, variants, character sets, date/time type and various kinds of dynamic and associative arrays: Delphi programmers will find them very similar to the ones in their favorite language. The collection of these basic data types may be useful, among other things, for building compilers and interpreters for higher-level languages.
Streaming interfaces provide buffered I/O with simple and powerful text parsing methods. A strictly defined syntax for a given text format or a formal language can be represented by calls to PTypes token extraction methods. The unified streaming interface is applicable to files, named pipes and network sockets.
Special thread class with enhanced functionality called unit. Units have their own main() and input/output 'plugs'; they can be connected to each other within one application to form pipes, like processes in the UNIX shell.
Finally, everything above is portable: all platform-dependent details are hidden inside.