Splax language

Interpreter for Splax, A dynamic programming language I made while learning how compilers and interpreters work.

Splax Language Documentation

File Extension

Splax supports text files with spx file extension. example: main.spx

Hello, world!

A simple hello world program in splax:

print "Hello, World!";

Semi-colons at the end of every line is mandatory in Splax.

Datatypes

Splax has following datatypes

Numbers

These can number literals which can be both integers and floating point numbers.

examples: 1, 2.5, 9

Strings

These are string literals defined inside "

examples: "Splax", "Strings are easy"

Booleans

These are boolean literals which can be either true or false.

examples: true, false

Null

Splax has nulls, the trillion dollar mistale. It can be defined using the null keyword. All uninitialized variables are given the value of null.

examples: null

Operators.

Splax has following operators:

Assignment

= - equals

Unary operators

- - Unary negation

Logical operators

and - logical AND

or - logical OR

! - logical NOT

Arithmetic operators

+ - sum

- - difference

* - product

/ - division

% - mod

Comparison operators

== - is equals

!= - is not equals

> - is less than

>= - is less than or equals

> - is greater than

>= - is greater than or equals

Comments

Splax has only one type of comment, single line comments, which can be defined using // at the beginning of a line.

// This is a comment.
// The Lexer completely ignores any line starting with //
// The Whole line is ignored.

Variables

Splax has variables which can be defined using the let keyword without defining any data type, splax can automatically detect datatype at runtime.

syntax:

let variable_name;
let variable_name = initial_value;

example:

let a; // default value is null if nothing is assigned.
let b = 2; // numbers: both integers
let c = 2.5; // and floats
let d = "Strings are easy"; // strings
let e = true; // booleans

Scope

Splax variables have scope like any other modern programming language (the term modern here can be understood as the same as modern in modern chess)

let a = 1;
{
    let a = 2;
    print a; // 2
}
print a; // 1

Conditionals

Splax has if else conditionals. It can be defined using the following syntax:

if (condition) {
    // todo
} else {
    // else todo
}

example:

let a = 1;
if (a == 1) {
    print "A is infact 1";
} else {
    print "A is not 1";
}

While loop

while loops in splax can be defined using the following syntax:

while (condition) {
    // todo
}

example:

let a = 10;
while (a > 1) {
    print a;
    a = a - 1;
}

For loops

Splax has syntactic sugar for for loops.

syntax:

for(initialiser; condition; incrementer) {
    // todo
}

example:

for(let i = 0; i < 10; i = i + 1) {
    print i;
}

Functions

Splax have user defined functions, and ability to call them.

Function declaration

A function in splax can be defined using the following syntax:

fn function_name(parameters) {
    // todo
}

example:

fn greet(name) {
    print "Hello " + name;
}

Calling functions

A function can be called using the following syntax:

function_name(parameters);

example

greet("Splax");

Using the interpreter

Running the interpreter on a spx file.

splax run main.spx

Running the live repl ( doesn't work half of the time )

splax repl

The help message

splax

A learning programming language.

Usage: splax <COMMAND>

Commands:
  repl  Interactive repl
  run   Run from a file
  docs  See docs
  help  Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help  Print help

Building from source.

1. Clone the repo and make sure you have installed rust compiler and cargo. Here's the official installation guide.

2. Build using cargo.

cargo build --release

You can test the interpreter on example present in /examples folder