The Ace Programming Language

A tiny stack-based, forth-like language.

Examples

Demonstrating everything in the language:

:helloMessage "Hello, "

:user $USER

:printTwo `echo +1 +2`

helloMessage user printTwo

More simply:

`echo Hello, $USER`

Learn

In ace, we can:

• Declare words by starting a line with a colon and ending with two new line characters: :this is a word
• Declare strings between two double quotes: "This is a string"
• Declare calls between two tick marks: \this is an external call``
• Add from the stack to a call with a plus and the number on the stack: echo +1 +2 +1
• Call a declared words by its name: call
• Reference environment variables with dollar sign: $VARIABLE

Install

Note: ace only works on LF, not CRLF

Make sure you have golang installed, then

git clone https://github.com/winstonpuckett/ace
cd ace
go build

Why/where is this going?

I'm not satisfied with today's build tools. They are either tightly bound to an ecosystem or not well documented.

The idea for this language was to create an easy to learn, run-anywhere, fast build system.

TODO

• Automated testing for all current features
• Handle parsing errors gracefully
• Handle CRLF
• Package Management
• Idempotency?
• Pipeline
• Easier install