CINT

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CINT is a command line C/C++ interpreter that is included in the object oriented data analysis package ROOT. Although intended for use with the other faculties of ROOT, CINT can also be used as a standalone addition to another program that requires such an interpreter.

CINT is an interpreted version of C or C++, much in the way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java. In addition to being a language interpreter, it offers certain bash-like shell features such as history and tab-completion. To accomplish the latter, it relies heavily on the reflection support built into ROOT. User classes that follow these interfaces may also take advantage of these features.

The language interpreted by CINT is actually somewhat of a hybrid between C and C++, covering about 95% of ANSI C and 85% of C++. The syntax, however, is a bit more forgiving than either language. For example, the operator -> can be replaced by . with only an optional warning. In addition, statements on the command line do not need not end with a semi-colon, although this is necessary for statements in macros.

[edit] Problems

Much like ROOT, in which it is embedded, CINT has attracted criticism (see for example [1]). Some specific criticisms include:

Given complications introduced by some of its extensions, its nonstandard handling of templates, and forgiving aspects of its syntax, CINT can not be expected to fully implement an interpreted version of C++. Some valid C++ code will not run under CINT; even more dangerous, some code will run but exhibit significantly different behavior between interpreted and compiled versions.
Failures may not be immediately evident, but may lead to undefined behaviour at arbitrary points during script execution.
CINT's forgiving implementation of C++ syntax allows users to write their scripts as non-compliant C++ (containing, for example, pointer/object ambiguities). Converting a CINT script to compilable C++ can be a non-trivial task, if the script was not written with these concerns in mind.