The FluffOS driver

The FluffOS driver is the program (written in C++) which provides the low-level support that makes a mud possible. The driver does many things, including:

1. Accepts connections from remote machines (via a listen port) and hands each new connection to the master object's connect() apply, which returns the login object that the connection is attached to.

2. Provides a set of external functions (efuns) that may be called from within LPC objects.

3. Compiles LPC source files into a compact internal bytecode form. This happens the first time an object is loaded, for example via load_object(filename) or clone_object(filename).

4. Interprets (executes) objects represented in the bytecode form. The two main ways in which code gets executed are as follows:

   a) The driver calls functions in objects based on input received from users (via their connection). The specific functions that get called depend on what associations the objects of the mud have specified between player-typed commands and functions (via the add_action(function_name, command_name) efun). The driver also calls functions in LPC objects at certain lifecycle events; these callbacks are known as applies (such as create, init, and clean_up).

   b) Objects can cause the driver to execute code in other objects via the call_other(object, function_name, args, ...) efun. An alternate form of the call_other efun is object->function_name(args, ...).