CINT is a command line C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

/C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 interpreter

Interpreter (computing)

In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...

 that is included in the object oriented data analysis package

Software package (installation)

In package management systems, which are commonly used with Linux-based operating systems, a package is a specific piece of software which the system can install and uninstall....

 ROOT

ROOT

ROOT is an object-oriented program and library developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining....

. 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

BeanShell

BeanShell is a Java scripting language, invented by Patrick Niemeyer. It runs in the Java Runtime Environment and uses Java syntax, in addition to scripting commands and syntax.- Features :...

 is an interpreted version of Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

. In addition to being a language interpreter, it offers certain bash-like shell

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

 features such as history and tab-completion. To accomplish the latter, it relies heavily on the reflection

Reflection (computer science)

In computer science, reflection is the process by which a computer program can observe and modify its own structure and behavior at runtime....

 support built into ROOT. User classes that follow these interfaces may also take advantage of these features.

The language interpreted by CINT is actually something 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 to end with a semi-colon, although this is necessary for statements in macros.