Language (.lang)

Background

The goal of this langauge is to allow for the build up highly nested types, and to enforce relationships between. This is particularly useful for serialising data, handling complicated HTTP response data, and highly interconnected data.

Primitives

The primitves aim to be informative to ensure that there is no ambiguity on how the primitive will function.

Keyword	Full Name	Size
uint8	Unsigned Integer 8-bits	1 byte

Syntax

Variable Declaration

Basic Assignment

The language uses a C-style variable declaration. Namely the form {type} {identifier} = {value};. For example:

uint8 a = 10;

Assignment From Variable

Variables can also be assigned a value from another variable.

uint8 a = 10;
uint8 b = a;

Returning

Values can be returned with the return keyword. For example:

uint8 a = 1;
return a;

Arithmetic

Values can be defined as a series of arithemtic statements, combining identifiers and values:

uint8 a = 1;
uint8 b = a + 1;
uint8 c = a + b + 1;

Examples

Examples can be found in the /examples folder.

Compilation Structure

File Reader

The file is opened and read in it's entirity to an std::string.

Lexer

String segments are converted to a list of tokens. Representing the smallest segment of a statement. Tokens can be inherited by sub-tokens, to add more specificity.

Token Name	Token Type Enum	Description
End of line	END_OF_LINE	Eend of a statement
Primitive	PRIMITIVE	Parent class of a primitive type
Operator.	OPERATOR	Parent class of an operator type
Identifier	IDENTIFIER	Variable identifier
Number	NUMBER	Integer
Return	RETURN	Returns a value from a function

Syntax Analyser

Combines tokens into statements.

Statement Name	Statement Type Enum	Description
Initialisation	INITIALISATION	Initialises a variable with the given primitive type
Assignment	ASSIGNMENT	Sets a variable to a value
Return	RETURN	Returns a value from a function
Addition	ADDITION	Adds two values and assigns them to an identifier

LLVM Intermediate Representation

The statements are then converted into LLVM Intermediate Representation (LLVM IR). Each statement translates almost-directly into a line in the LLVM IR, and so the primary technical content of this stage is keeping track of identifiers and using them where needed.

Compilation

The LLVM IR is compiled into an output.o file, which is then compiled using clang to create a finished main.out executeable.