Helium Programming Language

A little glossary:

• A list of items: (1, 2, 3)
• An object has members (probably should be properties, attributes, fields, or something)
• All functions go into modules, including the fictitious main function
• Script functions vs native functions.

How to build

Simple! Using CMake:

mkdir cmake-build-debug
cd cmake-build-debug
cmake ..
cmake --build .

Debug mode

• automatic disassembly is enabled by default (into .helium_disassembly)
• full value tracing is enabled (HELIUM_TRACE_VALUES, output .helium_value_trace)
• GC tracing is enabled (HELIUM_TRACE_GC, output .helium_gc.log)

Spec

Built-in types

• boolean
• integer
• real
• string
• list
• object
• nativeFunction
• scriptFunction
• internal
• nil

Implicit conversion rules

• integer to real
• note: no implicit conversions to bool
  • use explicit comparison for <value> != 0, 0.0 and empty strings
  • use has <value> to test against nil more succinctly

Notes

• Garbage collection per https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-bacon/Bacon01Concurrent.pdf (like PHP 5.3)

TODO

• some examples of usage
• strings mutable or not?
• all compile-time options