CesilC

CESIL, or Computer Education in Schools Instruction Language, is a programming language designed to introduce pupils in British secondary schools to elementary computer programming. It is a simple language containing a total of fourteen instructions.

Ladies and gentlemen, CESIL time. That's right, I did it again! And this time it works (maybe).

47 years later, introducing a brand new, fast, epic cesil compiler.

Installation

There is currently no binary build for macos. That is because linux -> mac cross-compilation fails with some long and chaotic error message and It would be super complicated to fix and I don't want to have to read the Xcode license and I'm sure it would make me give all my copyright rights to Apple [...]

There are installation scripts in the releases.

Syntax

I was not able to find any official specifictions, so I had to go mainly by the wikipedia article. When it was first created, cesil was punched onto punch cards. This means that the syntax written in a text file on a computer must be modified a little. Here is what I did:

You are not forced to use columns
If a line starts with (, it is a comment
Empty lines and comments are ingored
If a line starts with an identifier, then the first word is considered a label, word 2 is condidered the command and word 3 (if it exists) is considered the argument
If the line starts with a whitespace, the first word is considered the command and the second one the argument

This means that the following program:

        LOAD    +0
LOOP    STORE   TOTAL
        UIN
        JINEG   DONE
        ADD     TOTAL
        JUMP    LOOP

DONE    PRINT   "The total is: "
        LOAD    TOTAL
        OUT
        LINE
        HALT

is just as valid as

 LOAD +0
LOOP STORE TOTAL
 UIN
 JINEG DONE
 ADD TOTAL
 JUMP LOOP

DONE PRINT "The total is: "
 LOAD TOTAL
 OUT
 LINE
 HALT

Data section starts with % and ends with *

Compilation targets

The compiler will detect the target you want from the output file extension.

Current

Planned

Java
APKs (using java)
Batch files (MS-DOS compatible)

Compilation to JS

Currently only works in browser
You include the build script in the browser using <script src="your-script.js"> and then use window.CESIL_RUN(...)
If you give the CESIL_RUN function a function as an argument (eg window.CESIL_RUN(x => console.log(">" + x))), that function will be used for logging. If you give it a query selector (eg window.CESIL_RUN('#output')), it will put output into the selected element.
You can define window.CESIL_LINE_END to set a custom line break string.
Feel free to use the code from test.html

Compilation to PHP

The line delimeter (\n for terminal, < br > for browser) is determined by if interactive mode is on. If you want to compile for terminal without interactive mode, change the line 8 of your compilation result to say

$LINE = "\n";

Dm me on discord if you want to request a compilation target!

API coverage

This implementation covers 100% of cesil api.
A new instruction is added: UIN, this reads a number from stdin and saves it to the accumulator. This is for interactivness of your binaries and won't compile unless you use the interactive flag.

CLI usage

Run cesilc --help to get cli usage information.

Preprocessor

CesilC has its own preprocessor! It currently only has one command: #include filename

Careful!

Do not enclose the file name in "

( Correct
#include source.ces

( Wrong
#include "source.ces"

Roadmap

Catch some errors at compilation time
Error handeling so the compiler doesnt ever crash
More compilation targets
...

VsCode cesil highlighting?

Here

Additional questions

If you have any questions or want to contact me for any reason, add me on discord: danik#4985

Development

You can make your own compilation targets, just have a look at the source. You can use make_release.sh to generate binaries for all platforms.

License

This program uses the GPLv3 license. See its full text in the COPYING file!

Cesil compiler/transpiler
Copyright (C) 2022 danik4985

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Notes

Compilation to mac and shitdows binaries isn't tested. In case it doesnt work, compile to c source and use your compiler to compile that. (And report it to issues).
To compile to binaries, you need to have gcc installed.
If you encounter any problems, please report them in the issues tab.
If you enjoy this project, I would be very happy if you starred it (so that more people see it.) ⭐

danik4985 / cesilc