8.1 Introduction

8.1 Introduction

One of the goals of FunnelWeb is that it must be extremely

portable, and a significant effort has gone into achieving this.

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An equally important goal was that of correctness and

reliability. To this end, it was determined that a large automated

Developer

suite of test programs be prepared to assist in regression testing.

Preparing the test suite was tedious, but achievable. Automating

Reference

it portably was more difficult.

1 Introduction

2 Interface

The difficulty faced was that if FunnelWeb was implemented in

the form of a utility that could be invoked from the operating

3 Scanner

system command language, the only way to set up regression

4 Parser

testing was in the command language of the operating system

5 Analyser

of the target machine (shellscripts for UNIX, DCL for

6 Tangle

OpenVMS, batch files for MSDOS, and 

nothing

  on the

7 Weave

Macintosh). The huge variation in these command languages

8 Shell

led to the conclusion that either the automation of regression

9 Commands

testing would have to be rewritten on each target machine, or a

10 Glossary

small command language would have to be created within

FunnelWeb. In the end, the twin goals of portability and

11 References

regression testing were considered so important that a small

command shell was constructed inside FunnelWeb. This is

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called the 

FunnelWeb command shell

, or just "the shell" for

short.

By default, when FunnelWeb is invoked, it does not enter its

shell. If just given the name of an input file, it will simple

process the input file in the normal manner and then terminate.

To instruct FunnelWeb to invoke its shell, the +K or +X

command line option must be specified when FunnelWeb is

invoked from the operating system. It is also invoked upon

startup if the file fwinit.fws exists.

Most FunnelWeb users will never need to use the shell and

need not even know about it. There are four main uses of the

shell:

As a tool to support automated regression testing.

1.  

As a development tool on machines that do not have a

2.  

built in shell (e.g. the Macintosh). The shell can be used

to process whole groups of files automatically.

As a convenience. A user working on a multi tasking,

3.  

http://www.ross.net/funnelweb/reference/shell_introduction.html (1 of 2) [3/3/2000 10:45:57 PM]