/smallscript

SESC Small embeddable scripting langauge

Primary LanguageC

smallscript

Small embeddable scripting language (SESC)

Design Goals

  • JSON compatible object notation
  • Small
    • Small executable footprint
    • Small memory footprint
    • Small-C compatible
    • Small language set
  • Consistency
    • every thing should behave symmetrically
    • ranges should act like lists
  • Inspirations
    • Javascript
      • Duktape
    • Lua
    • Python

Thoughts & Todo

  • Needs Callable functionality

    • ABI:
      • Args are passed and returns as integer index in current scope
      • Args are passed as list argv in current scope
    • Parent Scope reference:
      • integer index 0 in current scope (except root scope)
      • called parent
    • Root Scope
      • called global
      • called root
      • called parent
    • Callable code bodies
      • Looping
      • Conditionals
      • function definitions
      • save as
        • raw text
          • define ctx and run with eval
        • minified text
          • runs as raw, but more efficient
        • compiled byte code
          • requires byte code parser
          • moves toward full compilation
        • executable parse tree
          • just walk the tree to run the code
          • similar to test approaches, but stored first half of eval already done.

  • Needs Small-C compatible interpreter

  • Memory management

    • Rely on reference counting
    • Needs way to detect circular references
      • Scan contents of htable for itself?
      • Prevent an htable from containing itself as key or value?

  • Needs iterators

    • Lists as:
      • resizable array type
      • Just a htable
    • how to iterate through keys

  • a better way to uniquely save strings

  • save memory

  • should hashs of htables hash contents?

  • operators

    • just call into hash lookup function
    • cfunc for each operator
    • should unary be left associative? does it matter?
    • Implicit Type conversions
    • explicit type conversions
    • function overloading through recursive context stack
    • operator precedence
      • want less levels than C, python, javascript or lua
      • Pascal model makes some sense
    • others
      • iff logical equality
      • implies logical
      • xor logical sum