An expression-based, binary nesting language
Lobster is a prototype of a nested programming language (Lisp-like), that can be evaluated as pure expressions.
The advantage of Lobster is the speed and small size at which it can be embedded or used in other applications.
Lobster is a single header embeddable language. However you can build it into an executable by running this command
$ make all
Then, you can compile snippets of code like so
$ ./bin/Lobster "+(8 5 -(9 9))"
13
To Use Lobster in your application or program, just use the Lobster.h file.
The goals of the Lobster Language, despite being quite small, is to prove a different method of evaluation for nested structures in programs, and to greatly decrease the complexity associated with runtimes, virtual machines, and such.
Specifically, Lobster aims to tackle the following issues:
- Eliminate the use of AST's, Parsers, Tokens and runtimes.
- Direct translation from source code to bytecode.
- Evaluation of instructions in linear O(n) time.
Lobster accomplishes this via direct translation instead of traditional tokenization, parsing, code generation etc.
Example:
+ ( 5 4 )
| || ||
[Add, Start, int, {binary}, int, {binary}, End]
Lobster is MIT licensed and open source.