Rhino’s

(Originally posted 2011-11-20.)

The very first computer game I ever played was called Rhino and it ran on a Commodore PET. The school had been lent one for a fortnight. (I don’t know why as we didn’t go on to buy any, instead getting a single RML 380Z.) Imagine a character-grid screen where the rhino’s are represented by pi symbols that chase you as you try to move from A to B. It was written in BASIC and allowed from 1 to 10 rhino’s. (We modified it so it would allow up to 100: It played much slower but the overwhelming number of pi signs was good for a 5-minute giggle.)

Having got that off my chest normal service is resumed: 🙂

Today I want to talk to you about a different Rhino. It’s a javascript interpreter written in java. And it’s documented here.

Some of you will know that I don’t think java is a particularly modern language. If you’ve kept your ear to the ground you’ll know there are MANY that have a better claim to the mantle of "coolest language (today)". 🙂 One of the nice things about it, though, is that it is zAAP-eligible. And a couple of nice things about javascript is that a lot of people know it, and it’s got some really neat features.

Here’s a sample that shows one of its capabilities – processing XML:

xml=new XML(stdinText)
print(xml.item.(@type=="carrot").@quantity)

These two lines parse a text string (in the variable "stdinText") as XML and print the value of the quantity attribute of each XML node that has "carrot" as the value of its type attribute. If you know XML I think you’ll see the power of that.

For completeness here is the XML and the whole code to read the XML string from stdin and do the XML query:

First the XML:

<sales vendor="John">
  <item price="4" quantity="6" type="peas"/>
  <item price="3" quantity="10" type="carrot"/>
  <item price="5" quantity="3" type="chips"/>
</sales>

and now the javascript:

importPackage(java.io)
importPackage(java.lang) 
stdinText=""
stdin=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System["in"])) 
while(stdin.ready()){
  stdinText+=stdin.readLine()
}
xml=new XML(stdinText)
print(xml.item.(@type=="carrot").@quantity)

In this version of the code two java packages are imported that are used to get the XML from stdin. I chose to do this so I could indirect from a file – and also from BPXWUNIX (the REXX interface to z/OS Unix I’ve mentioned several times recently here).

The "new XML()" phrasing is part of the javascript’s E4X capabilities – that allow it to process XML so neatly. (Another part is directly assigning literal XML (not a string) to a javascript variable. See ECMAScript for XML for a description of E4X.

One of the nice things about javascript is the proliferation of frameworks for it. My favourite is Dojo though I’ve also used jQuery. Although Dojo (and jQuery) have a lot to offer for web applications much of that isn’t applicable to z/OS Unix System Services. But some very useful things remain. For example some language extensions like "dojo.forEach()" iteration.

So I set out to try two things:

1. Installing and using Rhino. You’ve seen an example of this above – processing XML.
2. Installing and using the Base component of Dojo.

The latter proved interesting: I made a bit of a mess of it by copying the Dojo Base files up to z/OS one at a time. I should’ve done it wholesale. But I got there in the end. And here’s a test script:

load("dojo.js")
dojo.forEach([1,2,3],function(x) {print(x)})
print(dojo.isRhino)

which does the following:

1. It pulls in the Dojo code.
2. It creates a temporary array – [1,2,3] and iterates over it – printing 1 then 2 then 3.
3. It prints "true" because Dojo is indeed running under Rhino.

So, it was quite easy to get the Rhino javascript interpreter up and running – under java – on z/OS. It would’ve been easy to install Dojo Base if I hadn’t made a mess of it. I think if you have people used to javascript they could be productive quite quickly – so long as you’re comfortable with a java-based environment. As previously mentioned, you could readily call javascript code this way from REXX with BPXWUNIX. Indeed you could have REXX pass the actual javascript code in.

On the performance side you need to be aware that Rhino converts the javascript code to java classes on the fly. It’ll probably perform well after the initial conversion – so stuff with lots of iteration. And I would expect it to offload to a zAAP (or zIIP via zAAP-on-zIIP) quite readily. (I’d love to see measurements if anyone tries it.)

As well as Rhino, Mozilla make a C-based javascript interpreter (SpiderMonkey) but I think that would be a much more difficult thing to get running on z/OS. 

And if you want an exemplar of how far games have come from the original Rhino try Uncharted 3. I’ve just completed in and it’s outstanding. (So outstanding I want to go back and play the whole thing again, as well as dipping my toe in the multiplayer water.)

| Corrected to read "BPXWUNIX" instead of "BPXWDYN".