LachlanLindsay/ark-lang

Functional language with Lisp style syntax and some syntactic sugar for great readability.

Ark Lang

Functional language with Lisp style syntax and some syntactic sugar for great readability.

Ark

Ark is a hobbyist language not to be taken seriously or used in production!

Ark will eventually be strongly typed and will be a good hybrid between classical imperative OOP and Functional language styles - leaning more towards the functional paradigm - aiming to get the best of both worlds.

My Motivations

Yet another hobbyist lang.

Why am I creating this language? Mostly to learn. I love de-mistifying things that we commonly take for granted. Language implementation is no exception and there is so much to gain by having a better understanding of what goes into building a programming language and how they work.

Language Spec

Checkout the Grammar

Comments

;; this is a comment

Variable Declaration

let a = 1
print a ;; 1

let a = 2,
    b = (** a 2)
print b ;; 4

Strings

let a = "G'day world"
(out a) ;; G'day world

Strings are enumerable and can be used in a for-in enumerator expr.

Array

let a = [1,2,3,4]
(out (len a)) ;; 4

Arrays are enumerable and can be used in a for-in enumerator expr.

Numeric Operations

;; addition
(+ 1 2) ;; 3
;; substraction
(- 1 2) ;; -1

;; multiplication
(* 2 3) ;; 6

;; division
(/ 6 3) ;; 2

;; modulo
(% 5 2) ;; 1

(< 1 2)  ;; true
(< 1 0)  ;; false
(> 1 0)  ;; true
(> 1 2)  ;; false
(>= 1 0) ;; true
(>= 1 1) ;; true
(>= 1 5) ;; false
(!= 1 2) ;; true
(!= 1 1) ;; false

Bitwise Operations

(^ 1 1)     ;; 0
(^ 1 2)     ;; 3
(& 3 1)     ;; 1
(<< 1 2)    ;; 4
(>> 2 1)    ;; 1
(>>> 3 1)   ;; 1
(| 3 1)     ;; 3
~0          ;; -1 (bitwise compliment)

Logic Operations

(and true false) ;; false
(and true true)  ;; true
(or true false)  ;; true
(or (> 1 2) (!= 1 3)) ;; true 

Lambdas

(lambda sum : a b -> (+ a b))
(sum 4 6) ;; 10

(lambda filter : c f -> {
  let a = []
  (i:c) {
    if (f i) {
      (add a i)
    }
  }
  send a
})
;; filter nums greater than 3
let nums = (filter [1,2,3,4,5] lambda : x -> (<= x 3))
(print nums) ;; [1,2,3]

Range Expressions

Shorthand syntax to generate a range from a lower to an upper bound.

1..5 ;; [1,2,3,4]
1...5 ;; [1,2,3,4,5]

A range expression resolves to an Array.

For-In Enumerable Iteration

for x in 1...5 {
  (out x)
}
;; 1
;; 2
;; 3
;; 4
;; 5

With index identifier:

for x, i in 1...5 {
  (out x i)
}
;; 1 0
;; 2 1
;; 3 2
;; 4 3
;; 5 4

Sending (Coming soon)

This is probably my favourite feature of Ark. Using sends adds so much clarity. You will see below how data flows from the left to the right. Rather than nesting function calls, expression are evaluated from the left to the right...

[1,2,3,4] -> (pow 2) ;; [1,4,9,1,6]
    -> (filter lambda | x -> (< x 5)) ;; [1,4]
    -> (lambda | x -> Point(x:x, 0)) ;; [Point(1,0), Point(4,0)]

More features to come! 💃

Language Roadmap

• Strong typing
• Structs
• Standard Library
  • File I/O
  • Network I/O (TCP/IP, HTTP)
  • I/O Streams
  • Regex
  • Math
  • Data Structures (Stacks, Queues, Heaps, etc)
• Dependency management (inspired by Golang github urls)
• Unit Testing Framework
• Static Analyser for IDE Integration
• Syntax Themes for Sublime, Atom, etc

Dev Install

1. Open Ark prompt $ ./ark
2. Or, execute an ark file $ ./ark [file]
3. ⌨ Have fun!