Loki

Loki is an experimental programming language that I am building both to learn more about compilers and test ideas about language design.

Disclaimer

Since I don't find rust to be a productive language anymore I am now trying to implement a similar langauge in GO which I will open source soon.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/amirrezaask/loki.git
cd loki
cargo install --path .
# if you have added cargo bins inside your path you can use loki command.

How It works

Loki compiler consists of multiple stages of compilation:

• Lexer: produce a stream of tokens for each input file.
• Parser: produces an IR structure for each file.
• Type checker and inference: type inference and checking of the IR happens here.
• Bytecode: lowering language features into simpler constructs happen here.
• Backend code generation: this will produce code that gets compiled or assembled using a third party toolchain.
  • C: Done.

Todos

• Loki main should wrap user main function so we handle return int and stuff.
• Default values for structs
• Defer: *each function that have a defer usage, will have a label at the end (with a guard) so when user does return we first jump to defer run the instructions and then we come back and return.
• Unions
• Type table in output binary + access through #type() directive that will result in the type of the expression.
• Definitions of #load that will make exported symbols accessible from a namespace.
• LLVM
• If and while and for to not require parens in parser. ( Parser has ambiguity due to expr { means initialize , so we should change initialize syntax if we want this.)
• Generics