An Overview of P-Lingua 2.0

P–Lingua is a programming language for membrane computing which aims to be a standard to define P systems. In order to implement this idea, a Java library called pLinguaCore has been developed as a software framework for cell–like P systems. It is able to handle input files (either in XML or in P–Lingua format) defining P systems from a number of different cell–like P system models. Moreover, the library includes several built–in simulators for each supported model. For the sake of software portability, pLinguaCore can export a P system definition to any convenient output format (currently XML and binary formats are available). This software is not a closed product, but it can be extended to accept new input or output formats and also new models or simulators.

The term P–Lingua 2.0 refers to the software package consisting of the above mentioned library together with a user interface called pLinguaPlugin (more details can be found at http://www.p-lingua.org).

Finally, in order to illustrate the software, this paper includes an application using pLinguaCore for describing and simulating ecosystems by means of P systems.