Editing SWIG (section)

==Purpose==
There are two main reasons to embed a [[scripting language|scripting engine]] in an existing C/C++ program:
*The program can then be customized far faster, [[Ousterhout's dichotomy|via a scripting language instead of C/C++]]. The scripting engine may even be exposed to the end-user, so that they can automate common tasks by writing scripts.
*Even if the final product is not to contain the scripting engine, it may nevertheless be very useful for writing test scripts.

There are several reasons to create dynamic libraries that can be loaded into extant interpreters, including:
*Provide access to a C/C++ [[library (computer science)|library]] which has no equivalent in the scripting language.
*Write the whole program in the scripting language first, and after [[profiling (computer programming)|profiling]], rewrite performance-critical code in C or C++.