ArkScript

Documentation
Discussions: to receive help with the language, discuss new features and ideas
Modules

Nota bene: the project is referred as "Ark" and as "ArkScript". The official public name is "ArkScript" since "Ark" is already being used by another language

Key features

ArkScript is

small: the core fit under 8000 lines of code ; also small in terms of keywords (only 9)
a scripting language: very easy to embed it in your projects. Registering your own functions in the language is made easy
portable: a unique bytecode which can be run everywhere the virtual machine is
a functional language: every parameter is passed by value, everything is immutable unless specified
powerful: provides closures and explicit capture
promoting functionalities before performances: expressiveness often brings more productivity, though performances aren't left behind
a Lisp inspired language, with fewer parentheses: [...] is expanded to (list ...) and {} to (begin ...)
extensible: supports C++ module to use it in the language, adding functionalities

Also, it has:

macros: if/else, values, and functions
tail call optimization
a REPL with autocompletion and coloration
a growing standard library, composed of ArkScript code (under lib/std/) and C++ (under lib/ext/)
a lot of unit tests (but never enough), which are ran before every release to ensure everything works as expected
docker images:
- stable, built after each release
- nightly, built after each commit

Examples

Fibonacci suite

(let fibo (fun (n)
    (if (< n 2)
        n
        (+ (fibo (- n 1)) (fibo (- n 2))))))

(print (fibo 28))  # display 317811

More or less game

(import std.random)
(import std.Math)

(let number (mod (math:abs (random)) 10000))

(let game (fun () {
  (let impl (fun (tries) {
    (let guess (toNumber (input "Input a numeric value: ")))
    (if (< guess number)
      {
        (print "It's more than " guess)
        (impl (+ tries 1)) }
      (if (= guess number)
        {
          (print "You found it!")
          tries }
        {
          (print "It's less than " guess)
          (impl (+ tries 1)) }))}))

  (let tries (impl 0))
  (print "You won in " tries " tries.") }))

(game)

More examples are available inside examples/.

Installation

You can either use docker:

docker pull arkscript/stable:latest

# or use the most updated repo
docker pull arkscript/nightly:latest

or build the project with CMake and install it with CMake:

cmake --install build

Contributing

First, fork the repository
Then, clone your fork: git clone git@github.com:username/Ark.git
Install the pre-commit hooks: pre-commit install (you may need to install pre-commit first)
Create a branch for your feature: git switch -c feat-my-awesome-idea
When you're done, push it to your fork and submit a pull request

Make sure you follow the contribution guidelines before submitting your pull request!

Don't know what to work on? No worries, we have a list of things to do 😉

Related projects

We have other projects tightly related to ArkScript, which aren't necessarily C++ oriented:

the standard library, written in ArkScript itself
the standard library modules, extending the capacities of the language, written in C++
ArkDoc, a documentation generator à la doxygen for ArkScript, written in Python 3
our website written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Our beloved contributors

Full list here.

Coding guidelines for contributing

See C++ Coding guidelines if you want to contribute to ArkScript compiler / runtime.

Also, see ArkScript Coding guidelines for other files, written in ArkScript.

For performance reasons, some functions might be written in C++, in include/Ark/Builtins/Builtins.hpp and src/Builtins/.

Code structure

Building

Dependencies

C++20
CMake >= 3.15
Visual Studio >= 11 (on Windows)
On macOS versions prior to 10.15, libc++ lacks filesystem in the standard library.
- Install a newer compiler using Homebrew: brew install gcc && brew link gcc
- Pass compiler path to cmake in the build step: -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/local/bin/g++-14 -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/local/bin/gcc-14

⚠️ When passing a specific C++ compiler to CMake, add the corresponding C compiler as ArkScript relies on C code as well ; otherwise you'll cryptic get compilation/linking errors (using CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER and CMAKE_C_COMPILER).

Through CMake

Different CMake switches are available to customize the build:

-DARK_BUILD_EXE to generate an executable, defaults to Off, building a shared library only
-DARK_ENABLE_SYSTEM to enable sys:exec (execute shell commands without restrictions), defaults to On
-DARK_NO_STDLIB to avoid the installation of the ArkScript standard library
-DARK_BUILD_MODULES to trigger the modules build
-DARK_SANITIZERS to enable ASAN and UBSAN
-DARK_TESTS to build the unit tests (separate target named unittests)
- -DARK_COVERAGE to enable coverage analysis ; only works in conjunction with -DARK_TESTS, enables the coverage target: cmake --build build --target coverage

# first, clone it
git clone --depth=50 --branch=dev https://github.com/ArkScript-lang/Ark.git
cd Ark
git submodule update --init --recursive
# building Ark
cmake . -Bbuild -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DARK_BUILD_EXE=On
cmake --build build --config Release
# installing Ark (might need administrative privileges)
cmake --install build --config Release

Desired output of arkscript --help:

DESCRIPTION
        ArkScript programming language

SYNOPSIS
        arkscript -h
        arkscript -v
        arkscript --dev-info
        arkscript -e <expression>
        arkscript -c <file> [-d] [-f(importsolver|no-importsolver)]
                  [-f(macroprocessor|no-macroprocessor)] [-f(optimizer|no-optimizer)]

        arkscript <file> [-d] [-L <lib_dir>] [-f(importsolver|no-importsolver)]
                  [-f(macroprocessor|no-macroprocessor)] [-f(optimizer|no-optimizer)]

        arkscript -f <file> [--(dry-run|check)]
        arkscript --ast <file> [-d] [-L <lib_dir>]
        arkscript -bcr <file> -on
        arkscript -bcr <file> -a [-s <start> <end>]
        arkscript -bcr <file> -st [-s <start> <end>]
        arkscript -bcr <file> -vt [-s <start> <end>]
        arkscript -bcr <file> [-cs] [-p <page>] [-s <start> <end>]

OPTIONS
        -h, --help                  Display this message
        -v, --version               Display ArkScript version and exit
        --dev-info                  Display development information and exit
        -e, --eval                  Evaluate ArkScript expression

        -c, --compile               Compile the given program to bytecode, but do not run
        -d, --debug...              Increase debug level (default: 0)

        -f(importsolver|no-importsolver)
                                    Toggle on and off the import solver pass

        -f(macroprocessor|no-macroprocessor)
                                    Toggle on and off the macro processor pass

        -f(optimizer|no-optimizer)  Toggle on and off the optimizer pass
        -d, --debug...              Increase debug level (default: 0)

        -L, --lib                   Set the location of the ArkScript standard library. Paths can be
                                    delimited by ';'

        -f(importsolver|no-importsolver)
                                    Toggle on and off the import solver pass

        -f(macroprocessor|no-macroprocessor)
                                    Toggle on and off the macro processor pass

        -f(optimizer|no-optimizer)  Toggle on and off the optimizer pass
        -f, --format                Format the given source file in place
        --dry-run                   Do not modify the file, only print out the changes
        --check                     Check if a file formating is correctly, without modifying it.
                                    Return 1 if formating is needed, 0 otherwise

        --ast                       Compile the given program and output its AST as JSON to stdout
        -d, --debug...              Increase debug level (default: 0)

        -L, --lib                   Set the location of the ArkScript standard library. Paths can be
                                    delimited by ';'

        -bcr, --bytecode-reader     Launch the bytecode reader
        <file>                      If file isn't a bytecode file, the cached compiled will be
                                    loaded ; if there are none, it will be compiled first

        -on, --only-names           Display only the bytecode segments names and sizes
        -a, --all                   Display all the bytecode segments (default)
        -st, --symbols              Display only the symbols table
        -vt, --values               Display only the values table
        -cs, --code                 Display only the code segments
        -p, --page                  Set the bytecode reader code segment to display
        -s, --slice                 Select a slice of instructions in the bytecode

VERSION
        4.0.0-ff04fd55

LICENSE
        Mozilla Public License 2.0

In your own project

Please refer to the embedding ArkScript tutorial.

Performances

See https://github.com/ArkScript-lang/benchmarks

Games

You can find a snake created in ArkScript in the folder examples/games/snake (run it from there, otherwise it won't find the font and the sprites ; you won't need to install the SFML).

Controls are the arrows (left, right, up and down), the game closes itself when you successfully collect the 3 apples.

The donors

Huge thanks to those people for their donations to support the project:

TheCountVEVO
llexto
COUR Eloïse
AKPINAR Dylan
Ryan C. Gordon through his 2022 Microgrant

Cool graphs

Credits

This project was inspired by game programing patterns and ofan lisp.cpp

Copyright and Licence information

This ArkScript distribution contains no GNU GPL code, which means it can be used in proprietary projects.