errcw/bfc

bfc
===

About
-----

I wrote a brainfuck to x86/Linux assembly compiler, bfc, in Python. Brainfuck
is an esoteric language that, though extraordinarily minimal, manages to be
Turing complete. Bfc comes in two parts: a command-line interface and the
actual compiler. The compiler, like the language, is rather simple. It has
assembly templates for each brainfuck instruction that it concatenates then
inserts into a larger program template. Currently it performs no optimizations
but it could conceivably fold the various increment and decrement instructions
into a single assembly instruction.

Examples
--------

For fun, here are a few examples of brainfuck doing moderately useful things:

cat: pipes input to output
,[.,]

hello world: prints 'Hello World!\n' (from Wikipedia)
++++++++++                set cell zero to 10
[
   >+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-
]                         loop to set the next four cells to 70,100,30,10 
>++.                      'H'
>+.                       'e'
+++++++.                  'l'
.                         'l'
+++.                      'o'
>++.                      space
<<+++++++++++++++.        'W'
>.                        'o'
+++.                      'r'
------.                   'l'
--------.                 'd'
>+.                       '!'
>.                        newline

add: adds two single-digit numbers (from Wikipedia)
,>++++++[<-------->-],[<+>-]<.

Usage
-----

To transform a Brainfuck file (e.g., cat) into a working program:
> echo ,[.,] > mycat.bf
> python bfc.py -o mycat.s mycat.bf
> as -o mycat.o mycat.s
> ld -s -o mycat mycat.o
> ./mycat