movie-travel-code / moses

Moses is a simple programming language.

What is moses for?

moses is a simple project just for improving my compiler skills, including

• 1. How to write a parser
• 2. How to apply semantic analysis
• 3. Code generation
• 4. Static program analysis
  • Optimization
  • Symbolic execution
  • Pointer analysis
  • Type analysis
  • Or any static analysis skills
• 5. How to write a interpreter
• 6. How to write a linker, debugger etc.
• 7. Garbage collection

But so far, I just finished 1, 2, 3, 5 in june 2016. Current buggy implementation is very simple and have many places borrowed from llvm2.6, like the IR design.

Another role of moses is to improve my English writing skills :).

Note: The reason why it was named moses is that I am learning religious history when I am implementing this. Yea, this name is farfetched.

How to build

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ sudo make

How to use

Although moses's functionality is not perfect, we can still achieve our goals by writing some simple programs, such as calculating factorials. There is a sample program for calculating factorials, see test/Factorial.mo, the implementation is as follows:

func fac(parm:int) -> int {
  var result = 1;
  while(parm > 1) {
    result *= parm--;
  }
  return result; 
}

var result = fac(10);
print(result);

We can use the command $ ./moses ../test/Factorial.mo to compute the factotial. In order to facilitate observation and debugging, we will print the tokens and IR by default. The ouput is as follows. As you can see, the 10! is 3628800.

func
fac
(
parm
:
int
)
->
int
{
var
result
=
1
;
while
(
parm
>
1
)
{
result
*=
parm
--
;
}
return
result
;
}
var
result
=
fac
(
10
)
;
print
(
result
)
;
FILE_EOF
Parser done!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 entry:
%result.addr = alloca int        ; < int* >
%0 = call int fac( int 10.000000)        ; < int>
store int %0, int* %result.addr        ; < void >
%1 = load int* %result.addr        ; < int >
call mosesir.print( int %1)        ;

define int fac( int %parm.addr)
{
 entry:
%retval = alloca int        ; < int* >
%0 = alloca int        ; < int* >
%result.addr = alloca int        ; < int* >
store int %parm.addr, int* %0        ; < void >
store int 1.000000, int* %result.addr        ; < void >
br label %while.cond1
 %while.cond1:
%4 = load int* %0        ; < int >
%gt.result5 = cmp gt int %4, int 1.000000        ; <  bool >
br bool %gt.result5, label %while.body3, label %while.end2
 %while.body3:
%6 = load int* %0        ; < int >
%dec7 = add int %6, int -1        ; < int >
store int %dec7, int* %0        ; < void >
%8 = load int* %result.addr        ; < int >
%mul.tmp9 = mul int %8, int %6        ; < int >
store int %mul.tmp9, int* %result.addr        ; < void >
%10 = load int* %result.addr        ; < int >
br label %while.cond1
 %while.end2:
%11 = load int* %result.addr        ; < int >
store int %11, int* %retval        ; < void >
%12 = load int* %retval        ; < int >
ret int %12
}

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IDom(entry): entry
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3628800

Internal implementation

Visit the wiki for the internal implementation details.

---

What is moses?

moses is a simple language, reference to swift, but simpler.

Variable declaration

moses support the type declarations and no-type declarations. Like,

var num : int;
var num = 10;

moses use the keyword var to start the variable declaration, we can explicitly specify the type of the variable by following with :. In addition, we can also use expression to initialize the variable and moses will infer the variable type by the initializer.

moses support four types temporarily, int, bool, user defined type, anonymous type. The user defined type is similar to struct in C. The anonymous type represent the types infered by the anonymous expression.

Given the code below, the {10, {!false, size}} represent the anonymous expression, moses will infer the anonymous type through this anonymous expression.

var flag = false;
var size = 500;
var num = {10, {!false, size}}; // Anonymous type.

The anonymous type of the variable num is shown below:

class 
{
  var : int;
  {
    var : bool;
    var : int;
  }
}

For the completeness of the language semantic, we can also use anonymous type in the variable declaration, and do the unpack operations for the variable with anonymous type. Given the code below, we can unpack num into three variables.

var num : {int, {int, bool}}; 
num = {0, {0, true}};
var num = {10, {!false, true}};
var {a, {b, c}} = num; // After the unpack operation, a = 10, b = true, c = true

There are two ways use the unpack operations:

• Use the unpack declaration to trigger the unpack operations
• Use the user defined type to trigger the unpack operations

The variable use unpack declaration is const qualified, and can only passed by value. We can use unpack operation for the variable declaration and for the call expression whose type is anonymous type, e.g the call for the functions whose return type is anonymous.

// (1) Use the `unpack declaration` to trigger the unpack operation.
var num = {0, 1};
var {start, end} = num;

// (2) Use the `user defined type` to trigger the `unpack operation`
// Note: `user defined type` can't convert to the `anonymous type`
class base
{
  var start : int;
  var end : int;
};

var num = {0, 1};
base b = num;

Like swift, moses support the const semantic too.

// In `moses`, `const` variable do not necessarily have to be intialized.
const num : int; 
num = 10; // `num` cannot reassigned

Type

moses only have two builtin types, int and bool, the length of int is 32bits. For the user defined type, e.g. class, it's similar to the struct in C, the default access is public. However, moses doesn't support inheritance and access control for now.

moses adopts structural type equivalence, not like C/C++ or Java which adopt nominal type system, anonymous type and structural type system complement each other.

class base
{
  var start : int;
  var end : int;
  var flag : bool;
};
var b : base;
var anony = {0, 0, true};
b = anony; // Since the structural type equivalence, it is legal in `moses`

From the sample code, we can see anonymous type and user defined type can converted to each other.

Function

The function definition is as follows.

func add(lhs : int, rhs : int) -> int  
{  
	return lhs + rhs;  
}  

The function definition is started with func, and specify the return type by following the parameter list with ->. The parameter can also be const qualified.

func add(const lhs : int, const rhs : int) -> int
{
	return lhs + rhs;
}

In order to be compatible with anonymous type, we can also use anonymous type when passing parameters and returning values.

var num = {0, 0, {true, 0}};
func add(lhs : {int, int, {bool, int}}, rhs : int) -> {int, int}
{
  var {start, end, {flag, num}} = lhs;
  return {start, end};
}

In addition, moses provide a simple builtin function print.

Value semantic and reference semantic

moses imitates JAVA, the builtin type use value semantic and user defined type use reference semantic. pointer and reference are not supported for the time being. In order to support reference semantic, maybe we need to implement the garbage collection.

// Since user defined type use `reference semantic`, the modification of `parm` will reflected on the arguments.
func add(parm : base) -> int
{
  return base.num;
}

func sub(const parm : base) -> int {}

For the parameter with anonymous type, we have to unpack the values into the local variables. When we unpack the parameter's value, moses use value semantic.

Return Multiple Values.

Since moses support anonymous types, we can return multiple values through anonymous types. In C++, we can use user defined types to return multiple values. In moses, we do not need to explicitly define user defined type for the multiple values return.

func add() -> {int, int}
{
  return {0, 0};
}
var num = add();

// For anonymous type, since we cannot visit the field declaration, we have to
// unpack the anonymous types which used for the multiple values return.
var {a, b} = num;

// Of course, the best manner is unpack the return value directly.
var {start, end} = add();

Control statements

moses support two control statements, if else and while loop.

// Conditional expression does not need `(` and `)`.
if lhs < rhs
{
  //...
}

while flag
{
  // ...
}

Sample code

var number = 100;
var sum : int;

while(number > 0)
{
  sum += number--;
}

var result : bool;
if (sum > 100000)
{
  result = true;
  while(sum > 0)
  {
    sum--;
  }
}
else
{
  result = false;
}

The IR for SSA form is shown below, the IR is premitive, with lots of redundancy and no optimization. In the future, I will improve the IR and apply the optimization algorithms.

 entry:
%number.addr = alloca int        ; < int* >
%sum.addr = alloca int        ; < int* >
%result.addr = alloca bool        ; < bool* >
store int 100.000000, int* %number.addr        ; < void >
br label %while.cond0

 %while.cond0:
%3 = load int* %number.addr        ; < int >
%gt.result4 = cmp gt int %3, int 0.000000        ; <  bool > 
br bool %gt.result4, label %while.body2, label %while.end1

 %while.body2:
%5 = load int* %number.addr        ; < int >
%dec6 = add int %5, int -1        ; < int >
store int %dec6, int* %number.addr        ; < void >
%7 = load int* %sum.addr        ; < int >
%add.tmp8 = add int %7, int %5        ; < int >
store int %add.tmp8, int* %sum.addr        ; < void >
%9 = load int* %sum.addr        ; < int >
br label %while.cond0

 %while.end1:
%13 = load int* %sum.addr        ; < int >
%gt.result14 = cmp gt int %13, int 100000.000000        ; <  bool > 
br bool %gt.result14, label %if.then10, label %if.else12

 %if.then10:
store bool , bool* %result.addr        ; < void >
%15 = load bool* %result.addr        ; < bool >
br label %while.cond16

 %while.cond16:
%19 = load int* %sum.addr        ; < int >
%gt.result20 = cmp gt int %19, int 0.000000        ; <  bool > 
br bool %gt.result20, label %while.body18, label %while.end17

 %while.body18:
%21 = load int* %sum.addr        ; < int >
%dec22 = add int %21, int -1        ; < int >
store int %dec22, int* %sum.addr        ; < void >
br label %while.cond16

 %while.end17:
br label %if.end11

 %if.else12:
store bool , bool* %result.addr        ; < void >
%23 = load bool* %result.addr        ; < bool >
br label %if.end11

 %if.end11: