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Clipper was originally created in 1985 as a Compiler for '' DBASE III'', a very popular database language at the time. Compiling dBASE code changes it from interpreted code (i.e., human-readable Source Code ), which must be Interpreted every time each line of code is executed, to P-code (or pseudo-code), which uses a Virtual Machine to process the compiled p-code. p-code is considerably faster, but still not as fast as the Machine Code generated by native compilers. Clipper was created by Nantucket Corporation , and later sold to Computer Associates . On April 22, 2002 Computer Associates and GrafX Software announced they had reached a Development, Licensing, and Marketing Agreement for two of their software development languages -- CA-Clipper and CA-Visual Objects .

As the product matured, it remained a DOS tool for many years, but added elements of the C Programming Language and Pascal Programming Language , as well as OOP , and the code-block Data-type (hybridizing the concepts of dBase Macro s, or String -evaluation, and Function Pointer s), to become far more powerful than the original. Nantucket's Aspen project later matured into the Windows native-code Visual Objects compiler.

As of 2006 , the Clipper language is being actively implemented, and extended, by multiple organizations/vendors, Free ( GPL -licensed) like '' CLIP '', '' Harbour '', '' XHarbour '', as well as commercial compilers like '' XBase++ '', and '' FlagShip ''.

Many of the current (, as well as various Replaceable Database Drivers (RDD) supporting many popular database formats, like DBF , DBTNTX, DBFCDX ( FoxPro and Comix), MachSix (Apollo), SQL , and more. These newer implementations all strive for full compatibility with the standard dBase/ XBase syntax, while also offering OOP approaches and target-based syntax such as SQLExecute().

As of 2006 , the Clipper Usenet Newsgroup s comp.lang.clipper and comp.lang.clipper.visual-objects are still active.


PROGRAMMING IN CLIPPER

A simple Hello World - application:


? "Hello World!"


A simple data base input mask:

USE Customer SHARED NEW
cls
@ 1, 0 SAY "CustNum" GET Customer->CustNum PICT "999999" VALID Customer->CustNum > 0
@ 3, 0 SAY "Contact" GET Customer->Contact VALID !empty(Customer->Contact)
@ 4, 0 SAY "Address" GET Customer->Address
READ


The various versions of Clipper were

From Nantucket Corporation ; the "seasonal versions", billed as " DBase Compilers "


From Nantucket Corporation ; Clipper 5

  • Nantucket Clipper 5.00 - released 1990

  • Nantucket Clipper 5.01 - released April 15 1991

  • Nantucket Clipper 5.01 Rev.129 - released March 31 1992


and from Computer Associates ; CA-Clipper 5



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