Welcome to Jester Script
Quick Q&A
What is This Exactly?
Jester Script is a Lisp-inspired scripting langauge written in Rust
Why Was This Created?
Because I wanted to. The name "Jester" was concieved because this project was originally supposed to be a joke - yet here we are. I went through countless iterations before reaching the code, and who knows what's to come in the future...
How is it Maintained?
Jester Script is solely maintained by me, so while it works great in testing, there's are no guarantees!
Some Abstract
In Jester Script, everything ios defined by the object class Obj and given behaviour by the environment class Env
How Does it all Work?
(+ 1 2 3); congrats, you just added 1 + 2 + 3!
Lisp and Jester Script use a variant on a prefix notation known as S-Expressions. These expressions follow the following form:
; (operator arguments)
(+ 1 2) ; operator = '+', arguments = '1, 2'
(* 3 4 5 6) ; operator = '*', arguments = '3, 4, 5, 6'
(println "hello there!") ; operator = 'println', arguments = 'hello there!'
In Lisp, ; designates a comment. Also note that everything is separated by whitespace... commas will come into play later, but for a different use
Additionally, there is no "order of operations." Order is decided by parentheses:
(2 + 3) * 5 => (* 5 (+ 2 3))
Operations can be nested as much as you want or need...
(+ 1 (+ 2 (+ 3 (+ 4 (+ 5))))) = (+ 1 2 3 4 5)
But there is more to S-Expressions, and this is where Jester Script diverges a bit from Lisp (if you want to read more on Lisp itself, there are great online resources). Consider the following:
; expressions with no operator
(1 2 3)
(x y z)
("how" "are" "you?")
Luckliy enough, Jester Script doesn't completely break when this happens. In fact, this pattern is fundamental to its design.
S-Expressions without Operators are Lists!
You'll come to see the true power of S-Expressions later on
But Now What? It's time to vary things up... with variables that is
In Jester Script, all variables exist from the get-go with a value of nil (equivalent to null, or None). Now, Jester Script obviously doesn't store a list of all possible symbols. What happens is that every time Jester Script parses out a symbol it hasn't encountered before (unless it is a numeric or String literal), it will add that symbol to the environment with a default nil value:
(println x) ; prints out 'nil'
(set x 10)
(println x) ; prints '10'
(set x (1 2 3))
(println x) ; prints '(1 2 3)'
All variables are dynamically typed and mutable
In Jester Script, everything is passed by value (with one caveat I'll later explain), meaning that, technically, there are no 'references'
(set x (1 2 3))
(set y x)
(append 4 x)
(println x) ; prints '(1 2 3 4)'
(println y) ; prints '(1 2 3)'
Functions!
Functions are defined in the same syntax as everything else:
(defun add (a b)
(+ a b))
(println (add 10 20)) ; prints '30'
You might notice that the function has no return. Instead, Jester Script employs progns, which means that--for any expression--the last thing evaluated is also returned
Now lets explore the parallels between defun and let
Consider the following:
(let (a 10 b 20)
(+ a b))
This is a let statement. It takes and sets parameters to a given argument (10 -> a, 20 -> b), computes its body (+ a b) and returns the last expression
After exiting let, both a and b revert back to their previous values (in this case, lets assume they were nil prior). This is called a Lexical Scope, where variables maintain an "alias" while inside a defined space
let and defun are identical save for the way they are invoked. In both cases we added a and b within a lexical scope, but let could only be invoked at its declaration site with static arguments, while defun defines a variable that can be invoked with dynamic arguments
These similarities aren't a coicidence. Lisp and Jester follow a homogeneous design: everything is and S-Expression, meaning that new similarities between constructs naturally arise
Back to Progns
Remember, with S-Expressions, the last thing computed is also returned:
(+ 1 2 3) ; returns '6'
"hello" ; returns "hello"
(progn 1 2 3) ; returns '3,' the last thing the progn evaluated
Now to REPL?
Progns enable a unique feature of S-Expression languages: the Read-Eval-Print-Loop, aka REPL
A REPL works under the same principle of 'last thing evaluated is returned'
; Jester Script REPL
>> x ; input
nil ; output
>> (set x 10)
10 ; set still returns a value
>> (incr x 10)
20 ; incr also returns a value
>> x
20
>> (println "yay!")
yay!
"yay!"
; what happened here?
; since println also returns whatever it prints, it
; both logs it to the console then returns it again
; for the REPL to print for the second time
Symbols
This section is so important it recieved its own big title!
Remember when I said (in air-quotes) that Jester has no references, well, it does have Quotes!
Lets look at an example:
>> (set x "my favorite variable")
"my favorite variable"
>> (set y (quote x))
X ; why is there a capital x here?
>> (eval y)
"my favorite variable"
>> (set x "less favorite variable")
"less favorite variable"
>> (eval y)
"less favorite variable"
Note, because quote is so integral to Lisp, it has an integrated abbreviation of ' (one of the few syntax abberations): (quote x) = 'x
If you saw this and thought that quote is just a special way to say reference or & or *, you're partially right, but also completely wrong
What quote does is set, in this case y, to the literal symbol of x. So y = X where X represents the symbol of x (variable symbols are designated with uppercase)
It's a way of saying--essentially--DON'T EVALUATE THIS:
>> (+ 1 2 3)
6 ; obviously, we've established this
>> '(+ 1 2 3)
(+ 1 2 3) ; wha-?
>> '(* 1 2 (+ 3 4 "strawberry") a b)
(* 1 2 (+ 3 4 "strawberry") A B)
; even though this would usually cause an error
; as you can't add Strings and Numbers, because it
; doesn't evaluate, there's no issue
>> (eval '(* 1 2 "peaches"))
--ERROR
; this DOES error, because you EVALUATE it
Escapes
There's both a shortcut for quoting AND unquoting:
>> '(a b c)
(A B C)
>> '(a b ,c) ; note the comma next to c
(A B nil) ; the comma negated the quote!
>> ('a 'b c)
(A B nil) ; equivalent to previous
Back to Theory
Now is where the design of S-Expressions really comes into play. I'm going to say something, and it might not make sense... but In Jester Script, code is data and data is code. The very code you write can be treated as a variable. Actually, in my implementation of Jester Script, source code is represented by Lists of Objects.
Let me explain just what I mean
>> (set expression ()) ; set to empty list
()
>> (append 1 expression)
1
>> (append 2 expression)
2
>> expression
(1 2)
>> (append '+ expression)
+
>> expression
(+ 1 2) ; seem familiar?
>> (eval expression)
3
You just constructed addition between two numbers by pushing some symbols to a List, because code is data and data is code!
Macros
Macros are the final peice of the S-Expression puzzle--but they are different to the ones you know from Rust, C, or C++
In Jester, just like everything else, Macros are a part of the langauge
For example, the base Jester Script provides the following loop:
(set i 0)
(set sum 0)
; sum of integers [0 10)
(loop (< i 10)
(incr sum i)
(incr i 1))
This is pretty verbose, so lets think of a way to express a more concise loop:
(set sum 0)
(for i in 0 to 10
(incr sum i))
With macros, it is possible to create something like this--without special cases or text-based manipulations:
(defmacro* for (it in min to max body)
(let (res (gen-sym))
'(progn
(set ,it ,min)
(loop (< ,it ,max)
(set ,res (apply do ,body))
(incr ,it 1)
,res))))
Lets start from the top
defmacro* is the same as defmacro, only that it accepts a variable amount of arguments:
>> (defun* test (a b) b)
TEST
>> (test "a" "b" "c")
("b" "c")
; extra arguments "b" and "c"
; were folded into a List and stored in b
>> (test "a" "b")
("b")
; "b" still folded into one-element list
gen-sym generates a unique symbol dynamically:
>> (gen-sym)
G#0
>> (gen-sym)
G#1
>> (gen-sym)
G#2
A unique symbol, therefore, is stored in res
Continuing on, the let expression evaluates with res LITERALLY set to the new symbol
We are evaluating a '(progn ...), meaning we're returning progn and its arguments UNEVALUATED, save for, of course, the , escapes
Using the special function macro-expand, we can visualize what this macro will actually looks like:
>> (set sum 0)
0
>> (macro-expand (for i in 0 to 10 (incr sum i)))
(DO
(SET I 0)
(LOOP (< I 10)
(SET G#123 (APPLY DO ((INCR SUM I))))
(INCR I 1)
G#123))
Kind of beautiful, isn't it?
There's a lot more to know about Lisp and Macros. For a good starting point address: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/267862/what-makes-lisp-macros-so-special