BO-LANG (Bo Programming Language)

BoLang is a Toy Programming Language implemented in Go.

What Does Toy Language Mean? Toy language refers to any computer programming language that is not considered to be suitable or capable for building general purpose and high-end software and applications. It can be any programming language that lacks the advanced features, capabilities, programming constructs and paradigms of high level language. Toy language may also be termed esoteric programming language.

Techopedia Explains Toy Language Toy language was primarily created as a means of programming language research and education, proof of concept for a computer science or programming theory and to create a prototype for a new programming language. Typically, toy language has all the capabilities to perform simple to complex mathematical and programming computations. However, it has an incapability in terms of lesser or no library programs support, missing programming constructs such as pointers and arrays, which limits it in creating general-use programs and applications. Pascal, Treelang and Logo are popular examples of toy language.

Quote from Techopedia

This project is inspired by the book Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball. The goal of this project is to learn more about programming languages, interpreters, and compilers. BoLang is a toy programming language that is simple and easy to understand. It is not intended to be used in production.

Features

• Arithmetic operations
• Variables
• Functions
• Control structures (if, else, for, forever)
• Comments
• Error handling
• Coming soon...

Getting Started

# Clone the repository
git clone git@github.com:fatfatcocofat/bolang.git
cd bolang

# Build the interpreter
go build

# Run the interpreter
./bo

# Install the interpreter
go install

Examples

# Run the interpreter
❯ bo # assuming you have the interpreter installed in your PATH environment variable

   _____    _____
  /\  __/\  ) ___ (
  ) )(_ ) )/ /\_/\ \
 / / __/ // /_/ (_\ \
 \ \  _\ \\ \ )_/ / /_
  ) )(__) )\ \/_\/ //_/\
  \/____\/  )_____( \_\/

Welcome to BoLang v0.1.0.
Type !help to see the help message.
>> print("Hello, World!")
Hello, World!
nil
>> let x = 10
nil
>> print(x)
10
nil
>> let add = fn(a, b) { return a + b }
nil
>> print(add(10, 20))
30
nil
>> if (x > 5) { print("x is greater than 5") } else { print("x is less than or equal to 5") }
x is greater than 5
nil
>> ...and so on

Resources

• Writing An Interpreter In Go: A book by Thorsten Ball that walks through building an interpreter in Go.
• The Go Programming Language: A book by Alan A. A. Donovan and Brian W. Kernighan that covers the Go programming language.
• Writing A Compiler In Go: A book by Thorsten Ball that walks through building a compiler in Go.
• The Dragon Book: A book by Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman that covers compiler design.
• Crafting Interpreters: A book by Bob Nystrom that covers building interpreters and compilers.

Contributing

Contributions to BoLang are welcome. Please feel free to submit a pull request or open an issue.