ZLang
A toy language I'm working on as an educational project.
I will be working on this in parallel with building an interpretter for the "Monkey" language with Go as described in the book book: Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball
My work on the Monkey interpretter will be faithful to the books instructions. This project will allow me to be a bit more creative and experimental. I'll try to make more bold choices, and experiment with patterns. I suspect this will lead me down many wrong paths, but that's how I'll learn!
The "Zlang" language
Key features:
- interpretted language
- meaningful whitespace, minimal keywords
- functional-leaning
- built-in function pipelines
- human-readable identifiers which allow whitespace
Comments
Comments are enclosed in brackets.
multi-line
[
Here is a comment block
With multiple lines
]
single line
[This is a single line comment]
in-line
math function [this function does maths!]
(_ + 2 [ add 2 ]) * 3 [ then multiply by 3 ]
Values
Zlang will not actually support variables or mutation.
Declarations happen by putting an identifier on its own line, then assigning on subsequent, indented line(s)
my value
3
some computed value
my value * 2
Functions
Functions are values in ZLang. They are first-class citizens that can be passed around
All ZLang functions are unary. They must take a single argument.
That argument is refernced as _ in the function body.
my number
3
add one
_ + 3
Functions are exectued by indenting function(s) under a data value.
result [ result is 4 ]
3
add one
Function composition
Functions with multiple lines in the body are compositions.
add one
_ + 1
times three
_ * 3
add one then triple then divide by two
add one
times three
_ / 2
my number
3
result [ result is 6 ]
my number
add one then triple then divide by two
The Zlang interpretter
I'll be authoring the Zlang interpretter in Typescript. I will be trying to empasize readability and elegance over performance and robustness.
More details to come...