Soda

Soda (Symbolic Objective Descriptive Analysis) is an object-oriented functional language to describe, analyze, and model human-centered problems. Due to its readability, it can be applied to model ethical problems.

This project includes a translator to Scala.

Reserved words

The reserved words are:

: (type membership symbol)
-> (type mapping symbol)
= (definition symbol)
:= (parameter definition symbol)
lambda, any (synonym of lambda), --> (lambda symbol)
if, then, else
match, case, ==> (implication symbol in pattern matching)
class, extends, abstract, end
this, subtype, supertype
false, true , not, and, or
package, import
theorem, proof

Other Symbols

In addition, the language has:

( and ) (parentheses) for parameters and operator precedence
[ and ] (square brackets) for parametric types

The main arithmetic operators are:

+, -, *, /, % (modulus)

Comments are marked with /* and */. Scaladoc / Javadoc markers are /** and */.

Annotations:

@new to create JVM instances in translations to Scala 2
@tailrec to ensure a tail recursion
@override to override a JVM function

Special names:

_tailrec_ as prefix indicates that the function is tail recursive
_rec_ as prefix indicates that the function is recursive
Main is the entry point class, and Main_ () its constructor

Side Effects

In Soda, variables cannot change their value. Thus, it is not possible to write x = x + 1. Loops can be managed with range and fold functions and tail recursion.

The language does not provide throw, try, and catch, because those commands do not follow the functional style.

Static Typing

This language is statically typed. It is possible to define abstract and concrete classes. Each class (like a trait in Scala) can be extended and has a single class constructor. This constructor is implemented with a concrete class (like a case class in Scala).

Package Declaration and Imports

Soda is designed to be integrated via the Java Virtual Machine. It is possible to define packages and to declare imports. This can be done in a separate file Package.soda, which is in the same directory as the source code.

Syntax Highlighting

The following tools can be configured to have syntax highlighting:

IntelliJ (instructions are provided)
gedit (configuration file: soda.lang)

Documentation

User manual

Build

The project can be built with sbt with sbt clean compile test package assembly

A Linux binary can be created with the script makeall.sh.

Author

Julian Alfredo Mendez

TimKam / soda