README.md

Dara language

A super simple dynamic language with a focus on conciseness and readability.

Why

Firstly, to learn how to write interpreters and compilers! The core architecture is being written while learning (primarily) from three sources:

• Writing an Interpreter in Go
• Crafting Interpreters
• Go Source Code

Secondly, to build a dynamic language syntax and utility that I would personally like to use. It draws heavily on Go, JavaScript and Rust syntax (in that order) and aims to reduce the amount of code needed to achieve things, while maintaining high levels of readability.

Dara was written while following along with the book Writing an Interpreter in Go. As such, most of the core architecture will be similar (or even identical). However, the actual language has been adapted to have a more friendly syntax and far more features than Monkey, the language you build in the book. I highly recommend reading it if you've ever been interested in how programming languages work under the hood.

Status

Completed

• Lexer
• Error reporting with line-level accuracy
• Most of the parser
• Complete REPL (only works on values implemented in evaluator though)

In progress

• Implement evaluator
• Implement parsing objects

To Do (roughly in order)

• Special indexing operations for specific array elements (array[1:2], etc)
• Spread operators for arrays and objects
• Add line numbers to evaluator error reporting
• Remove all semicolons
• Build a compiler (stretch goal)
• Improve all error messaging, and have column-level accuracy (stretch goal)

Usage

If you clone the repo, you can run the REPL by compiling to binary, or running go run main.go. More to come.

Current Valid Dara (subject to change wildly)

// Declare values with `:=` (no declaration keyword).
five := 5;
num := 1.234;

// Dara uses `nil` to indicate the absence of a value. If you want to declare a
// variable without assigning a value, use `:= nil`.
// other;     // (not allowed)
other := nil; // allowed

// Assign values to existing identifiers using `=`. Functions are values.
add = fn(a, b) {
    return a + b;
}

// Can immediately invoke functions.
twenty = fn(num) {
    return num * 2;
}(10)

// No brackets around the logic in if statements. No truthy or falsy values,
// must use booleans in if statements.
if 1 > 2 {
    num = 1;
} else if five > 2 {
    num = 2;
}

/* Dara also allows multi-line comments using c-style syntax. */

// Available logical operators:
// < > ! == != >= <= && ||   (work on strings: < > == != >= <=)

// Available arithmetic operators:
//  + - * / %                (work on strings: +)

// Built in types:
noValue  := nil;
string   := "string";
number   := 1.234;
function := fn(a, b) { return a + b; };
array    := [1, 2, 3, 4];
boolean  := true;

// TODO types:
object   := {a: "a"};

// Built in functions:

// len()
five := len("Hello");
five = len([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])