Lua

I've added the EPICS Lua support module to our build system. Lua is a scripting language designed to be embedded, it has a small footprint and is reasonably powerful. It would provide an alternative to jumping through hoops in st.cmd syntax but also provides a few other options. All iocsh commands are imported into lua and so you can do things like:

''' for index=1,10,1 do print(string.format("Loading instance: %d", index)) iocsh.dbLoadRecords("test.db", string.format("P=xxx:,Q=%d", index)) end '''

You execute files from st.cmd using:

''' luash("file.lua") '''

or just typing "luash" puts you into an interactive lua shell.

The lua script record is like a calcout record but can execute lua script. It might be an alternative to e.g. aSub records for parsing stream device strings when writing C is a bit overkill.

As well as being able to read/write PVs there is also some asyn integration into lua, so you can read/write/set asyn parameters from lua command line or script record, or even talk to a device by creating an asyn IP port and sending strings. See the documentation directory in lua support module and the exampel scripts directory in iocBoot

To use

''' add LUA=$(SUPPORT)/lua/master to configure/RELEASE add luaSupport.dbd to the IOC Makefile DBD list add lua and asyn to the IOC Makefile _LIBS list '''