Demoniclambda (dλ) is a research-level, currently extremely unstable lambda-calculus based programming language. The development is in currently in early stages. Do not consider using demoniclambda.
The syntax is highly inspired by lambda calculus. The basic building block is a term (t), which is either:
Demoniclambda currently only has standard natural number literals and boolean values ⊥ and ⊤.
Demoniclambda as of now has immutable untyped variables. A variable can currently be anything in [a-z]+.
An abstraction is an anonymous function. It binds a variable x in the term t.
Form:
λx.t
Function application sets a bound variable to a definite value.
Form: t t
Applications are composed of binary operators between terms.
Form: t ★ t
Current supported operators are:
| Operator | Semantics |
|---|---|
| + | Integer addition |
| - | Integer substraction |
| / | Interger division |
| · | Integer multiplication |
| ∧ | Logical and |
| ∨ | Logical or |
Operator prescedence is that of standard mathematics.
There is current ongoing work to support Atom and VSCode by plugins.
Currently compiler does not have a convenient interface.
To use the compiler, one can type in valid terms and the compiler will output debug information and bytecode which results in evaluating that term and exiting with the value as exit code. The same bytecode will also be written in the file a.ll.
This can be compiled to binary with clang
clang a.ll -O3
There are currently two overarching design principles:
- We like Unicode
- We like lambda calculus
Otherwise, this is a testbed for compiler/programming language development. Radical things should be behind feature switches.
The most important requirement is LLVM-8, which the compiler is currently built on top of. This can generally be installed from binaries or can be compiled oneself. It is useful to enable assertions, in case the compiler produces invalid LLVM IR. LLVM should be compiled to be dynamically linked (currently we haven't figured out how to do this on Windows or how to work around this).
It should also be ensured that libtinfo-dev or similar is installed.
Other requirements should be fulfilled by stack.
stack setup
stack build
Then can run by
stack exec demoniclambda
Optionally:
stack install
Pull requests are in principle welcome but futile at this stage of development. It is recommended to discuss the changes beforehand by opening an issue.
The compiler is currently available under the BSD 3 clause license, see LICENSE.