Basalt

This repository hosts an interpreter for the Basalt programming language. In the future, the goal is to evolve this project into an all-in-one bundle made of an interpreter, a compiler, and a debugger. Basalt is designed to be compiled directly to machine code, and offers all the features a low level language would, while still being able to be interpreted like languages like Python or Ruby (enhancing portability, and reducing wasted time by removing the need to perform a full compilation of your code-base just to run unit-tests).

Installation (Building from source)

In order to install Basalt, you have to build it from source. Basalt can easily be built with CMake. Assuming CMake is installed on your machine, all you have to do is run the following commands.

$ git clone https://www.github.com/fDero/Basalt
$ cd Basalt
$ cmake -S . -B build
$ cmake --build build --target basalt

If you want to run the unit-tests, run the command cmake --build build --target basalt_unit_tests. This will create a binary called basalt_unit_tests that will perform the tests when executed. Tests are written using the gtest (googletest) unit-testing framework. Keep in mind that compilation will take much longer when compiling the test-suite, since gtest is a framework that heavily relies on the use of macros.

Hello World

To make your first hello-world program in Basalt, all it takes is to create a file with the .bt extension (in this case, it will be called hello.bt) containing the following code:

package main;

func main() {
    console::println("Hello, World!");
}

Once you have the file set up, to run it just use the basalt -r hello.bt command in console.

$ basalt -r hello.bt
Hello, World!

Types

Basalt is a strictly typed language, it has a C-style type system with Int, Float, Bool, Char, String as primitive types.

package main;

func main() {
    var x : Int = 6;
    var y : Float = 9.4;
    var f : Bool = false;
    var c : Char = 'z';
    var s : String = "hello world";
}

Recursion

Basalt supports recursion just like any other language, and a good way to show it is with the classic fibonacci example, consider the following code:

package main;

func fibo(n : Int) -> Int {
    if (n < 2) {
        return 1;
    }
    else {
        return fibo(n-1) + fibo(n-2);
    }
}

func main() {
    console::println(fibo(6));
}

assuming the file is called fibo.bt, then it can be executed just like we did earlier with the hello-world example, using the basalt -r command.

$ basalt -r fibo.bt
21