little - tiny bytecode language

little is a small, fast, easily embeddable language implemented in C.

var speak = fn(animal) {
    if animal is "cat" { return "meow" }
    elseif animal is "dog" { return "woof" }
    elseif animal is "mouse" { return "squeak" }
    return "???"
}

var animals = [ "cat", "dog", "mouse", "monkey" ]
for animal in array.each(animals) {
    io.print(string.format("%s says %s!", animal, speak(animal)))
}

Feature Overview

Tiny implementation - core langauge is <2500 sloc in a single .h/.c pair
Light embedding - compiles down to less than 20kb, 3 API calls to get started
Reasonably fast for realtime applications
Low memory footprint with simple mark and sweep garbage collector
Supports null, numbers, booleans, strings, functions, closures, arrays, tables, and native procedures
Optional, consise stdlib - an extra ~1000 sloc
Supports 32- and 64-bit, and will likely compile anywhere!
Feature-rich C api to integrate and interact with the VM

Simple embedding example

#include "little.h"
#include "little_std.h"

// this is called if the vm encounters an error, letting us react
void my_error_callback(lt_VM* vm, const char* msg)
{
    printf("LT ERROR: %s\n", msg);
}

int main(char** argv, int argc)
{
    lt_VM* vm = lt_open(malloc, free, my_error_callback);                    // open new VM
    ltstd_open_all(vm);                                                      // register stdlib
                   
    const char* my_source_code = ...                                         // read source from file/stream/string

    uint16_t n_return = lt_dostring(vm, my_source_code, "my_module")         // run code as "my_module" 
    if(n_return) printf("LT RETURNED: %s", ltstd_tostring(vm, lt_pop(vm)));  // if our code returns, print the result
}

Known issues

Recursion is broken, sorry
- just write better code

Potential improvements

Drop the AST for single pass compiler
- but only if it actually makes the impl smaller
precomputed goto/jumptable vm instruction dispatch
copy fewer strings probably

Contribution

Feel free to open an issue or pull request if you feel you have something meaninfgul to add, but keep in mind the language is minimalist by design, so any merging will be very carefully picked

License

Please see LICENSE for details

Beariish/little