/dw-lang

[Educational] A small interpreted language made from scratch.

Primary LanguageC#OtherNOASSERTION

DwLang Editor

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DwLang

An educational interpreted programming language that works with big numbers.

Usage from the command line

dwlang -?

Specifications:

  • interpreted language
  • execution is single threaded and sequential, all statements are executed in the order they are encountered

Language rules:

  • statements are delimited by a semicolon (i.e. ";")
  • the decimal separator is comma (i.e. ",")
  • empty statements are permitted and ignored during evaluation
  • a statement can be written on a single or multiple lines
  • spaces between an operator and its operands are optional

Data types:

  • a numeric type (BigDecimal)

Variables:

  • variable declarations consists of the 'var' keyword followed by the variable's name
  • variables name consist exclusively of letters and/or underscore
  • variables declaration and initialization can be optionally compound in a single statement (e.g. var a; a = 5; or var a = 5;)
  • reserved words of the language can't be used as variable names
  • reserved words are: var, sqr, pow, x, prm, avg, med, pwd, set, precision, print, cls

Binary operators:

  • + -> addition (e.g 2 + 3 = 5)
  • - -> subtraction (e.g 2 - 1 = 1)
  • : -> division (e.g 6 : 2 = 3)
  • x -> multiplication (e.g 3 x 2 = 6)
  • pow -> power (e.g 2 pow 3 = 8)
  • prm (permutations without repetitions where n is the number of things to choose from and we choose r of them, no repetitions, order matters. "n prm r" should evaluate to n!/(n − r)! )
  • pwd (number of possible passwords of maximum n characters, made on an alphabet of t characters. How many passwords of maximum 8 characters can I make using exclusively English letters: that is "52 pwd 8" -> which should be equal to 52 pow 8 + 52 pow 7 + ..... + 52 pow 1)

Unary operators:

  • sqr -> square root (e.g sqr 81 = 9)
  • ! -> factorial (e.g 4! = 24)
  • - (for negative numbers, e.g. -1)

Commands:

  • print (prints to the output stream, e.g. print 2 x 3)
  • cls (clears the output stream)

Var args operators:

  • avg -> average (e.g. avg 2 3 7 = 4)
  • med -> median (e.g. med 2 4 7 8 9 = 7)

Operations grouping:

  • parentheses with unlimited nesting depth

Directives:

  • set precision (e.g. can be variable or integer: "set precision 4; print 7:6;" should print 1,1667) can be set multiple times in the same program

Errors:

  • syntax errors and evaluation errors are printed to the console with their respective line and column numbers
  • if an operation has a non-deterministic result, the program should crash (e.g. a non-terminated decimal expansion)
  • attempting to use a variable that was not assigned any value should throw an evaluation error
  • evaluation and syntax errors are not fail-fast, meaning that the code will execute until an error is found

Comments:

  • anything sourounded by /* and *\ is ignored during evaluation
  • if enclosing markers are not balanced, the most outer ones are considered (e.g. "/* some comment *\ print 5; *\ print 3;" should only print 3.)