nthnca / gocookie

Small toy programming language (implemented in go)

cookie

The goal of this project is to create a small little program that implements a very basic programming language, but that could be used as a starting point for people interested in learning to code, or learning to write a programming language.

I implemented the same language in python as well: http://github.com/nthnca/cookie

Basic syntax

Assign an integer, 1, to a variable, v.

v = l;

Define a function, f:

f = {
  [statements]
  ...
}

Call a function, and assign the result to a.

a = f();

Some further notes:

• All variables are globally scoped. So have fun! :-)
• You can't pass parameters to a function, but variables are globally scoped so you can just use a normal variable.
• A function returns the value that is assigned to _r when the function exits.
• There are just four built in functions:
  • print(): prints the value in variable _1.
  • add(): returns the result of adding the values in variable _1 and _2.
  • if(): calls the function assigned to variable _2, if _1 is non-zero.
  • loop(): repeatedly calls the function assigned to variable _1 until that function returns a non-zero value.

In this language, all variables are of a global scope, and nothing is ever freed, although variables can be re-used.

By convention we use the variables _1, _2, etc to pass data into a function.

Examples

See the tests directory for examples.

Ideas

So here you go, have fun improving the language, some ideas:

• Add the ability to add comments // to a program.
• Allow passing parameters to functions.
• Make it so variables are scoped to the current function.
• Add a return statement.
• Add more builtin functions (less than, multiply, etc, etc)
  • Try not to add builtin types that you could implement in the language itself.
• Add more types: strings, arrays, maps, structs, etc.
• Allow importing code from other files.
• Whatever else you want...

For bonus points:

• Re-implement this little toy language in your favorite language.
• Re-implement this little toy language, in this toy language itself... :-)