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ni (a <> b) == ni a <> ni b

Ni is a stack-based, concatenative programming language. Here's how it works:

A program is a list of values.

A value is either:

  • an integer: 42,
  • a double: 3.14159,
  • a boolean: :true, :false,
  • a character: 'c',
  • a string: "Hello, World!",
  • a symbol: foo, !@#&*,
  • a list of values: [a b c ...],
  • or an environment.

A program is evaluated by converting every value to an action and running the actions, one after another, inside a context.

A context consists of a stack of values (the stack) and a stack of environments.

An environment is a map from symbols to actions.

A literal value pushes itself onto the stack.

Everything that is not a symbol is a literal value.

A symbol prefixed with a backslash (\) is literal (the backslash is removed).

A symbol prefixed with a dollar sign ($) pops a literal value from the stack and binds it to that symbol (with the dollar sign removed) in the topmost environment. A dollar sign on its own pops a value from the stack without binding it to a symbol.

Any other symbol has the action bound to it in the topmost environment in which it is bound.

Example

The following program prints the first ten Fibonacci numbers:

\fib [ $n
    0 1
    [ $x $y x y x + ]
    n times
    const
] define

0 $i [
    i fib print
    i increment $i
] 10 times

Library

The following primitives are available.

Unless otherwise specified, b af means that f pops a from the stack, then pops b from the stack, then pushes the result onto the stack, if any.

base environment

  • actioneval evaluates action in the current context. Lists are evaluated as programs. Symbols are evaluated by making them into a singleton list, for convenience.
  • name actiondefine binds the symbol name to the action of evaluating action.
  • nameunbind unbinds name in the topmost environment.
  • namenew creates a new empty environment with name name.
  • envuse pushes env onto the stack of environments.
  • unuse pops an environment from the stack of environments and pushes it onto the stack.
  • b a= and b a/= are the usual equality and inequality functions, respectively. Equality is defined trivially on all values except environments: two environments are equal if they have the same name.
  • anot, b aand and b aor are the usual boolean operations.
  • cond yes noifelse evaluates yes if cond is :true, else no.
  • b a+, b a-, b a*, b a/, b a% and b a^ are the usual addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, modulo and exponentiation operations, respectively, defined on both integers and doubles. + is also concatenation on strings and lists.
  • anull? tests whether a is the empty string or list.
  • vs vcons appends v to the list or string vs.
  • vsuncons breaks the list or string vs into its head and its tail, pushes its tail onto the stack, then pushes its head onto the stack.

io environment

  • vprint prints v to standard output. Strings and characters are printed literally, other values are converted to their string representation.
  • printStack prints the stack, represented as a list, to standard output.
  • getChar reads a character from standard input.
  • getLine reads a line from standard input.
  • exit terminates the program successfully.

Standard library

The file src/stdlib.ni is evaluated when Ni starts.

Parsing

Comments are introduced with #, and extend to the end of the line.

Numbers are parsed as an optional plus or minus sign, a (possibly empty) integer part, optionally followed by a dot and a (possibly empty) fractional part. One of the integer part or the fractional part must be non-empty. If a dot is present, the number is a Double, otherwise it is an Integer.

Character and string literals are parsed as Haskell literals.

Symbols are any sequence of non-whitespace, non-[] characters that fail to parse as any other type of value.

Environments have an output representation (<environment NAME>), but no input representation.

Credits

Ni's syntax and core principles were largely suggested to me by nitrix.

About

A stack-based concatenative programming language (and an IRC bot for some reason)

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