Gabelang

Overview

This is a language I am writing in rust for fun and to learn more about lexers, parsers, interpreters, and to dymistify programming languages in general. The Writing an Interpreter in Go book by Thorsten Ball was used as a reference and insperation for this project as well as mkdb by Antonio Sarosi.

BNF / Language Grammer

<program> = <statement> | <program> <statement>
<statement> = <let_statement> | <if_statement> | <while_loop> | <func_decl> | <expression>
<let_statement> = let <identifier> = <expression>;
<assign_statement> = <assignable> = <expression>;
<if_statement> = if <expression> <code_block>
<while_loop> = while <expression> <code_block>
<func_decl> = fn <identifier> <param_idents> <codeblock>
<code_block> = {<program>}
<param_idents> = (<_param_idents>)
<_param_idents> = <identifier> | <_param_idents>, <_param_idents>
<identifier> = <ident_char> | <ident_char><identifier>
<indent_char> = <ALPHACHAR> | _
<expression> = <group_expression> | <operation_expression> | <assignable> | <func_call> | <object_literal> | <array_literal>  | <number_literal>
<group_expression> = (<expression>)
<operation_expression> = <expression> <op> <expression>
<op> = + | - | * | /
<assignable> = <identifier> | <array_index> | <object_prop>
<array_index> = <assignable>[<expression>]
<object_prop> = <assignable>.<identifier>
<func_call> = <assignable>(<expression_list>)
<object_literal> = {<object_field_literals>}
<object_field_literals> = <identifier>: <expression> | <object_field_literals>, <object_field_literals>
<array_literal> = [<expression_list>]
<expression_list> = <expression> | <expression_list>, <expression_list>
<number_literal> = <number> | <number><number_literal>
<number> = 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0

Commenting

Comment your code using the //comment syntax Any text to the right of a double slash does not make it to the parser or interpretter and will not be evaluated as code

// This function doubles a number
fn double_num(num) {
    // Multiplies num by 2 to get the answer
    return num * 2;
}

Built in Functions

len(obj) -> number

• returns the length of an array or string
• throws an error if provided with something other than an array or string

reverse(obj) -> number

• returns a new reversed array or string without changing the parameter object
• throws an error if provided with something other than an array or string

Build

Build with

cargo build

Run

Run as repl with

cargo run

or run a script with

cargo run -- --file [script name]

Test

Run tests with

cargo test

Todo

• String Type
• Object get and set/string indexing
• For Loops
• Do While Loops
• Better Documentation
• Built in Functions(print, file, fetch, input)
• Add tests to ast and eval modules
• Add fun language syntax

Todo Reach

• Add tooling/language server
• Add bytecode compiler
• Create VM that can run bytecode
• Compile to/through C, NASM, or MIPS