BrightSign BrightScript 3.0 Reference Manual - Manual (Page 6)

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INTRODUCTION
BrightScript is a powerful scripting language for building media and networked applications for
embedded devices. This language features integrated support for a lightweight library of BrightScript
objects, which are used to expose the API of the platform (device) that is running BrightScript. The
BrightScript language connects generalized script functionality with underlying components for
networking, media playback, UI screens, and interactive interfaces; BrightScript is optimized for
generating user-friendly applications with minimal programmer effort.
This reference manual specifies the syntax of BrightScript. For a detailed listing of BrightScript objects,
refer to the
BrightScript Object Reference Manual . This manual is intended as a reference for those who
have some level of programming experience—it is not a tutorial for those who are new to programming.
For a quick flavor of BrightScript code, see Appendix C for a game of "snake" created using BrightScript.
BrightScript Characteristics
The following are some general characteristics of BrightScript, as compared to other common scripting languages:
• BrightScript is not case sensitive.
• Statement syntax is similar to Python, Basic, Ruby, and Lua (and dissimilar to C).
• Like JavaScript and Lua, objects and named data-entry structures are associative arrays.
• BrightScript supports dynamic typing (like JavaScript) and declared types (like C and Java).
• Similar to .Net and Java, BrightScript uses "interfaces" and "components" (i.e. objects).
BrightScript Operation
BrightScript code is compiled into bytecode that is run by an interpreter. The compilation step occurs every time a script is
loaded and run. Similar to JavaScript, there is no separate compilation step that results in a saved binary file.