Scripted Plug-ins

The plug-in library supports two interpreted plug-ins based upon the Tcl and Templex scripting languages.

Interpreted plug-ins are easy to author and change, however they may not perform as well compared to a compiled plug-in. The interpreter-based plug-ins support the Begin, OnRecord, and End events, and also have functions added to their interpreters to support table_info, record_info, and record_action functions. Unlike the C++ plug-in API, no arguments are passed to these events – they must call the query and action functions that added to the interpreter.
Optional arguments may be passed from XML and queried from the plug-ins using the GetOption command. This command has two forms:
  • GetOption() - returns the string passed to the plug-in by specifying the argument “opt_str” in the XML.
  • GetOption(key) - accepts a key value will return the value of any argument that is not interpreted as a functional argument, such as src, begin, onrecord, etc.
Option strings may contain context variables such as @current_subcase, @current_step, etc. The Expression Builder only supports passing optional arguments to a plug-in by passing values in the “opt_str” argument (the 1st form).
Important: The interpreters used by Result Math scripted plug-ins are separate from those that are included in the HyperWorks application. Variables and procedures defined in the application are not available to the plug-in interpreters.