Glóa is a language that compiles into Lua. The compiler is a single-file program written in pure Lua. MIT license.
Glóa introduces static type checking and constants and gets rid of forward declarations, while keeping things like modules, versatile tables and multiple return values. The language supports compile-time code execution, polymorphism and function overloading. It draws inspiration from Jai, C and Lua itself, among other languages.
Note: Glóa is under development and not intended for public use yet. The language and the compiler are made as a programming/design exercise. This repository is mostly for people interested in programming languages related to Lua or the development of a compiler/transpiler written in/for Lua.
Types can be explicitly specified or inferred from the assigned value in declarations. Types of variables can be as dynamic as they can be in Lua.
local age1 : int = 32 -- Explicit type.
local age2 : = 59 -- Inferred type (int in this case). The colon is optional here.
local foo : string|int = "bar" -- Compound type.
local value : any = true -- Literally any type.
-- Substitute the equal sign with a colon to make constants instead of variables.
local PI : float : 3.14 -- Explicit type.
local E : : 2.72 -- Inferred type (float in this case).The 12 basic value types in Glóa are: bool, int, float, string, table, type (types themselves are first-class values), arrays, functions, enums, structs, none (the type of nil) and any. (The idea of distinguishing integers from floating-point numbers comes from Lua 5.3.)
A variable can have multiple types (we call those compound types) which may sometimes be necessary to use if the program interacts with existing Lua code. The any type means the value can be of literally any type, which is not very safe but sometimes necessary. It acts like a compound type that contains all the types in the program. It effectively makes the variable work just like in Lua.
Values of the table type work exactly like Lua tables. The stricter and better alternatives to tables are arrays (for sequences) and structs for anything else.
Arrays and structs are restricted/well-defined tables:
local names: []string = {"Carl","Jenny","Bo"} -- []string means "array of strings".
local Entity :: struct { -- Entity is defined as constant here.
entityType: int = 0,
name = "no name", -- The type can be inferred.
x: float = 0.0,
y: float, -- The default value for floats is 0.0
}
local main :: () {
local ent: Entity -- ent is guaranteed to be a table. It's initialized with the members of the struct.
ent.x = 5
!import "basic" -- This is so we can access the standard print() function.
print(ent.name) -- "no name"
print(ent.x) -- 5
-- ent.foo = 5 -- Error: 'foo' is not a member of Entity!
local ent2: Entity = {y=7} -- Structs can be initialized with custom values.
print(ent2.x, ent2.y) -- 0 7
}The 'function' keyword from Lua is removed in favor of a shorter format for defining functions. The 'end' keyword is also removed as we define scopes using C-style curly brackets.
-- Functions are generally declared as constants.
local MY_CONST :: 5
local myFunction :: (x:int, y:int) -> bool, int { -- Function that takes two ints and returns a bool and an int.
return true, 7
}
-- With explicit types the above would look like this.
local MY_CONST : int : 5
local myFunction : (x:int, y:int) -> bool, int : (x:int, y:int) -> bool, int {
return true, 7
}
-- Function declarations can get quite long this way so it's better to have their types be inferred.
-- You can optionally name the return values for better-documented code.
local myFunction :: (x:int, y:int) -> (success:bool, result:int) {
return true, 7
}Variables can contain references to functions, and a function can take another function as an argument.
-- Here, the 'func' argument is a function that takes an int and returns a string.
local callMe :: (func: (n:int)->(s:string), n: int) -> string {
local str = func(n)
return str
}
local sizeToString :: (size:int) -> string {
if size < 100
return "It's small."
else
return "It's big!"
}
local main :: () {
local str = callMe(sizeToString, 598)
}Names in file scope can be declared and used out-of-order, unlike Lua. No forward declarations needed.
local main :: () {
!import "basic"
print(x) -- 1.23
}
local x = 1.23Here's how to do some more common things in Glóa.
!import "basic" -- Include a shared module/library. The "basic" module contains common functions like print() and insert().
!load "gui/elements" -- Include a file from the current project folder.
-- The 'main' function is the (default) entry point of a program.
local main :: () {
-- If statements.
if x < 0 -- No 'then' keyword, unlike Lua.
func1()
elseif x > 0 -- We could also write 'else if' as two words.
func2()
else
func3()
-- By default, only the one following statement belongs to if/elseif/while statements.
-- Use {...} to define scopes with multiple statements.
if x < 6 {
local n = 2^8
func(n)
}
-- Do statements (create a simple scope).
do {
local x = foo()
}
local x = 4 -- This x is different from the x above.
-- Switch statements.
local count = 2
if count == {
case 1:
print("We got one!")
local x = 5
case 2: !through -- Fall through to case 3.
case 3:
print("We got two or three!")
local x = true -- Cases have their own scope. This x is different from the x above.
case: -- The default case.
printf("We got %d...", count)
print("That's a lot!")
}
-- While loops.
local x = 10
while x > 0 {
x -= 1+1 -- Same as x = x - (1+1)
if x < 5
break -- We can 'break' or 'continue' loops.
}
-- For loops.
for 1, 3 print(it) -- 1 2 3
for array print(itIndex, it) -- 'it' is the default name for the item variable.
for v: array print(itIndex, v) -- Rename the 'it' variable.
for v, i: array print(i, v) -- Rename both the 'it' and 'itIndex' variables.
-- Lua-style and iterators:
for i = 1, 3 print(i) -- 1 2 3
for i, v in ipairs(array) print(i, v) -- ipairs() returns an iterator and whatever value the 'for' loop require.
for k, v in next, myTable print(k, v) -- Explicit iterator function.
-- Semicolons at the end of statements are optional, just like in Lua.
local x = 1;
local y = 2;
}Finally, code can be executed at compile-time. This is quite a powerful feature!
-- Here we generate the value for a runtime constant at compile-time.
local RANDOM_COLORS :: !run getRandomColors(4)
local getRandomColors :: (count:int) -> []string {
!import "basic" -- For insert()
!import "math" -- For getRandom()
local COLOR_BANK :: {"red","green","blue","orange","teal"}
local colors: []string
for 1, count {
local i = getRandom(1, #COLOR_BANK) -- # is the length operator.
insert(colors, COLOR_BANK[i])
}
return colors
}There are more features but it's too many to list on this one page! Proper documentation is yet to be written.
Full programs that showcase the language can be found in the Glóa Example Programs repository.
To use Glóa all you need is to have Lua 5.1 installed on your system (other Lua versions may be supported in the future). Currently you have to build the compiler first before using it.
To build the Glóa compiler (gloa.lua) run buildGloa.cmd, or run lua src/build.lua from the command line from the the top of the repository.
To compile a Glóa program, run this from the command line:
lua gloa.lua [compilerOptions] myProgram.gloa [myOtherProgram.gloa ...] [-- metaprogramArgument1 ...]--debug Output debug information into compiled programs.
--help Display this help.
--nogc Disable garbage collection during compilation. (May decrease compilation time.)
--nostrip Disable automatic removal of dead code. (May trigger runtime errors on start-up!)
--root <dir> Specify the root directory for the project. (Default is where the target .gloa file is.)
--silent Disable output to stdout. (Errors and warnings are still printed to stderr.)
-- Start of arguments for metaprogram.
/docs/- Relevant documents./lib/- Libraries used when building the compiler./modules/- Standard/shared Glóa modules/libraries./src/- Compiler source components./tests/- Test programs that the compiler should be able to compile.
When the compiler is built, the .lua2p and .luapart files are preprocessed and joined together to form gloa.lua.