HicEst: The quick way to create Windows applications with a personal touch

HicEst is a programming tool.
Powerfully simple.
Free.

• Translate your idea to a few simple program instructions (move mouse to info-symbol for more):
  

  ⓘ

  • Type a "statement" (for its meaning see examples below).
    Press Enter.
    An immediate result is displayed (or beeped).
  • Change it, discard it, or move on to another statement.
  • The emerging script can be refined little by little,
  • with no need for an extra tool.
• Write a script: Get context sensitive help, execute, and debug at the same time.
  

  ⓘ

  A statement is a single line. While it is typed:

  • A help tooltip shows.
  • For more help: F1 key or right mouse key.
  • A TAB key completes a command or a variable name.
  • Unnoticed by the user the statement is incrementally compiled.
  • When ENTER is pressed a result or an error message is displayed.
  • The line is stored to a script file
  • The statement can be undone and redone if needed.
• Small footprint, fast installation, ready!
  

  ⓘ

  • Download (1.4 MB) includes:
    • One single executable HicEst.exe
    • 1 help-file HicEst.hlp
    • Some demos
    • Complete HTML documentation for context sensitive help

  • After installation

    • Start HicEst.
    • Choose Menu - File - Blank template, this window.
    • A new script shows with only an END statement in line 2.
    • See Examples below on what you could try now.

Examples

1. You never wrote a line of program code? Let us simply talk about time ...
   
   1. How many seconds has an hour ?

      ⓘ

      • HicEst can serve as a printing desk calculator:
        Type in 60 * 60 and press Enter:

        60 * 60

        3600

      • A short answer is always shown at the end of the statement line.
   2. How many seconds have passed today ?

      ⓘ

      • Obviously the answer varies with the time this is asked.
      • We define a

        variable

        named "sec" (or almost any other word), and assign the answer of HicEst's TIME function to "sec":

        sec = TIME() ! always returns seconds since midnight

        58357.6

        The "!" makes the rest of the line a comment.
      • If you type or copy the statement again and press Enter:

        sec = TIME() ! sec has a new value now:

        58358.18

   3. How many seconds has this century so far ?

      ⓘ

      Many HicEst functions have

      optional keywords

      . The statements below show the idea:
      

      1. We calculate a "day number" for "January 1, 2000" and name this variable "day1":

         TIME( Month=1, Day=1, Year=2000, TO, Excel=day1)

         58517.29

         • The TO keyword separates the input keyword(s) from the result keyword(s).
         • The keyword "Excel" converts the input to an Excel-compatible "day number".
           "day1" is set to 36526.
         • Again the result-field shows the current time of the day in seconds.
      2. With no input keywords left of "TO" the current date is converted to the keywords right of TO, here the variables "right_now", m, d, and y:

         TIME( TO, Excel=right_now, MOnth=m, Day=d, Year=y)

         58519.15

         • To check the value of right_now move the cursor to it: A tooltip displays 41303.6819.
         • The decimal fraction of right_now is the current time of the day.
         • The next item below shows the complete results in a message box.
      3. Finally "sec" is set to the result of "(number of days) times (seconds per day)":

         sec = ( right_now - day1 ) * 24 * 60 * 60

         4.1279E8

         "E8" in the result field stands for 10^8 (100 million)
   4. Ways to get more detailed output:

      ⓘ

      The result-field always shows a maximum of information fitting to 8 characters.
      Increasingly better presentation is achieved by:

      1. Cursor on variable: A tooltip shows its value.
      2. F1 or right mouse click over variable: An Edit dialog opens allowing to change its value.
      3. The WRITE function has 32 optional keywords. Two are used here:
         • WRITE(Messagebox="i", name) "Results are:|", day1, m, d, y, sec
         Text, File, Statusbar, Titlebar, Clipboard instead of Messagebox are other options of WRITE,
         
         The optional Format keyword allows precisely formatted output.
         
         Other output functions are WINDOW, DLG, POP, COM, BEEP, Print.
2. In 4 statements calculate the growth of 100$ at 4% over 10 years and show as graph.
   

   ⓘ

   1. Initialize 3 numerical variables (no other declarations needed):
      • REAL :: capital=100, annual_rate=0.04, years=10
   2. Open a default child window (WINDOW has 55 more optional keywords):
      • WINDOW( WIN=handle, TItle="100$ at 4%" ) ! Windows sets handle
   3. Plot x-y coordinates to child window (default for 24 more options):
      • AXIS( WIN=handle, Title="years", MaX=years, Y, Title="capital + interest ($)")
   4. Plot 100 X-values of Y=... (16 more options):
      • LINE(X=years, Y=capital*(1+annual_rate)^years, Points=100 )

   Without step b the graph is drawn to the main window (script window).
3. In 5 statements search Shakespeare for the best matches of "The to-be-to question.".
   

   ⓘ

   • As with commercial search engines HicEst's Inverted Index allows fast full text searches of original master text(s).
   • a-c serve to build an index, d is the search. This script is complete and it works.

   1. The complete works of Shakespeare are read to the string variable "original". Required definitions:
      • CHARACTER original*6000000, InvIdx*6000000, found*100000
   2. Read the Shakespeare file and store it to "original":
      • OPEN( FIle="\Shakespeare\COMPLETE WORKS.txt", UNFormatted, LENgth=L)
      • READ( FIle="\Shakespeare\COMPLETE WORKS.txt", CLoSe=1) original
      The character count L is set by the OPEN function to 5590193.
   3. On an oldish Laptop it takes 21 sec to build InvIdx:
      • EDIT(Text=original, ID="all of W.S.", InvertedIndex=InvIdx)
   4. InvIdx (4211287 bytes, 24025 words indexed) can be searched now:
      • found = EDIT(Text="The to-be-to question.", InvertedIndex=InvIdx)
      • The 2 shortest matches out of 145 containing all search words in arbitrary order:
        1. "To be, or not to be- that is the question"
        2. "To be young again, if we could, I will be a fool in question, hoping to be the"
      • Numerous other options exist to build InvIdx and to search InvIdx.
        A single statement for example is enough to replace "all of W.S." used above by the name of the particular Shakespeare play.
      • Total search time is 125 msec.
4. CountDown.hic is a useful short example.

• Comparisons between HicEst and other languages by means of examples can be found in Rosetta Code.
• Good luck!

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©2000-2013 Georg Petrich, HicEst Instant Prototype Computing. All rights reserved.
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