shinobi

A simple new programming language

Building

The compiler currently builds with CMake and has a single program (found in driver.cc) baked into the binary. Running the compiler currently logs the test program's LLVM assembly code to the console and creates an object file for it, which is written to output.o. The object file can also be linked and run as part of a C/C++ executable (currently not documented).

cmake .
cmake --build . --target shinobi
./shinobi

Running tests

cmake --build . --target check

Language design

Data types

• No null/nil/undefined primitive. Only used with Value (see below).
• Booleans. bool.
• Signed integers. i8, i16, i32, i64, i128.
  • Two's complement.
• Unsigned integers. u8, u16, u32, u64, u128.
  • Byte data types should use u8.
• Floating point numbers. f32, f64.
  • IEEE 754.
• Character. char.
  • Unicode scalar value.
• Strings. string.
  • UTF-8 encoding.
• Symbol. symbol.
• Array. type[], type[size], type[size; fill].
• Tuple. (type0, type1, ..., typeN).
• Struct. struct { field0: type0, ..., fieldN: typeN }.
• Function. function name(arg0: type0, ..., argN: typeN): returnType { body }.
• Object.
• Error. Error.
  • Errors have a message, code, and cause.
  • Only Errors can be used as errors. In other words, strings or numbers cannot be errors.
• Value. Value<type, null>.
  • If present, the Value will be a value of type type.
  • If not present, the Value will be null.
• Result. Result<type, error>.
  • On success, the Result will be a value of type type.
  • On failure, the Result will be a value of type error.