akyoto / q

:seedling: Programming language focusing on performance and efficiency, archive from 2019. For a modern rewrite in 2024 please see the link below:

q

This is a very early version of a programming language I'm currently working on.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/akyoto/q
cd q
go build

This will produce the q compiler in your current directory.

./q build examples/hello
./examples/hello/hello

Features

• Fast compilation (<1 ms for simple programs)
• Small binaries ("Hello World" is 247 bytes)
• High performance (compete with C and Rust)

Todo

Compiler

• Tokenizer
• Scanner
• Parallel function compiler
• Error messages
• Expression parser
• Function calls
• Infinite loop
• Simple for loops
• Simple if conditions
• Syscalls
• Detect pure functions
• Immutable variables
• Mutable variables via mut
• Variable lifetime tracking
• return values
• import standard packages
• expect for input validation
• ensure for output validation
• Data structures
• Heap allocation
• Type system
• Type operator: | (User | Error)
• Stack allocation
• Hexadecimal, octal and binary literals
• match keyword
• import external packages
• Error handling
• Cyclic function calls
• Multi-threading
• Lock-free data structures
• Multiple return values
• Rewrite compiler in Q
• ...

Optimizations

• Exclude unused functions
• Function call inlining
• Assembly optimization backend
• Disable contracts via -O flag
• Expression optimization
• Loop unrolls
• ...

Linter

• Unused variables
• Unused parameters
• Unused imports
• Unmodified mutable variables
• Unnecessary newlines
• Ineffective assignments
• ...

Operators

• +, -, *, /
• ==, !=, <, <=, >, >=
• =
• +=, -=, *=, /=
• &=, |=
• <<=, >>=
• <<, >>
• &&, ||
• &, |
• %
• ...

Architecture

• x86-64
• WASM
• ARM
• ...

Platform

• Linux
• Mac
• Windows
• ...

Goals

• No binary dependencies (not even libc)
• No compiler dependencies (no LLVM, no GCC, ...)
• No global state (all mutable variables are local)
• No side effects when importing a package
• No name shadowing, names never change their meaning
• No complicated classes, just simple data structures
• Type system (reduce bugs at compile time)
• Linters (reduce bugs at compile time)
• Tests (reduce bugs at test time)
• Contracts (reduce bugs at run time)
• Simple dependency management
• Auto-formatter for source code
• User-friendly compiler messages

FAQ

How do I navigate the source code?

• benchmarks contains benchmarks for compilation speed
• build contains the actual compiler source
• cli contains the command line interface
• examples contains a few examples that are also used in tests
• lib contains the standard library

How do I view the produced assembly output?

q build -a
q build --assembly

How can I make a performance optimized build?

q build -O
q build --optimize

This will disable all expect and ensure checks.

How can I see where my compilation time is spent on?

q build -t
q build --time

How do I install it system-wide?

sudo ln -s $PWD/q /usr/local/bin/q

How can I include information about my system in bug reports?

q system

The output should look like this:

Platform:          linux
Architecture:      amd64
Go version:        go1.13.5
Working directory: /home/eduard/projects/akyoto/q
Compiler path:     /home/eduard/projects/akyoto/q/q
Standard library:  /home/eduard/projects/akyoto/q/lib
Last modified:     2019-12-27 11:06:47.841459978 +0900 KST
CPU:               Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz
CPU threads:       12

Which editor can I use to edit Q code?

There is a simple VS Code extension with syntax highlighting.

git clone https://github.com/akyoto/vscode-q ~/.vscode/extensions/vscode-q

Is the syntax final?

Unlikely. There will be changes in the near future.

Which builtin functions are available?

There are currently 2 builtin functions, syscall and print. In the future we'd like to remove print so that syscall becomes the only builtin function.

How do I run the tests?

go test -coverpkg=./...

How do I run the benchmarks?

go test -bench=. ./benchmarks

Style

Please take a look at the style guidelines if you'd like to make a pull request.