Spock

A work-in-progress programming language written in Rust for the best performance possible, whose syntax takes inspiration from Rust and Python. Basically, its goal is to provide a faster alternative to Python, and one that's closer to low-level languages, while still being accessible to a wide audience.

Key info:

• ~5-10x faster than Python in most cases, can go as far as :
  • Fibonacci function: ~14000x faster(first run) or ~2000x faster (later runs)

Instruction Set

Spock uses an instruction set with a size of 8 bytes. The available instructions can be seen here.

let x = 20;
// parentheses are optional
if (x < 200) {
  print("TRUE!");
}

becomes...

1 INF 0 1 2
2 CMP 2 2
3 PRINT 3

---

let n = 40;
let a=0;
let b=1;
let c=0;
let i=0;
while i < n {
   c = a+b;
   a = b;
   b = c;
   i = i+1;
}
print(c);

becomes...

1 INF 4 0 5
2 CMP 5 6
3 ADD 1 2 3
4 MOV 2 1
5 MOV 3 2
6 ADD 4 9 4
7 JMP 6 true
8 PRINT 3

Syntax examples

let x = 20;
// parentheses are optional
if (x == 20) {
  print("TRUE!");
}

let x = 0;
// parentheses are optional
while (x < 10) {
  print(x);
  x = x+1;
}

// parentheses are optional
for (x in [1, 2, 3]) {
  for y in "abc" {
    print(x.toStr()+y);
  }
}

let x = [10, 20, 30, 40];
print(x[0]);

Types

• Boolean (true/false)
• Integer
• Array ([1, 2, 3, "4", 5.0, true])
• String
• Float

Converting types

• x to Integer=> int(x)
• x to Float=> float(x)
• x to String=> str(x)

Built-in functions

• print(1, String) - Prints the given String
• input(0/1, String) -> String - Prompt the user for input (with a prompt if given)
• type(1, Any) -> String - Returns the type of the given object
• hash(1, Any) -> String - Returns a hash of the given object using the BLAKE3 hash function
• abs(1, Integer/Float) -> Integer/Float - Returns the absolute value of the given number
• round(1, Integer/Float) -> Integer - Rounds the given number to the nearest integer (Integer type simply returns itself)
• len(1, Array/String) -> Integer - Returns the length of the given Array (number of elements) or String (number of letters)
• sqrt(1, Integer/Float) -> Integer/Float - Returns the square root of the given number
• the_answer() - Prints and returns the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
• range(1/2/3, Integer) - Returns an array of integers:
  • [0..<first argument>] if only one argument was provided
  • [<first argument>..<second argument>] if two arguments were provided
  • [<first argument>..<second argument>], with the step defined by the third argument, if three arguments were provided

Basic macros

You can define macros outside functions using the following syntax: replace name->value
Example:

replace hello->goodbye

func main() {
print("hello world");
}

Imports

You can import functions from other .spock files by using the import keyword like so:

• otherfile.spock:

func demo() {
print("Hello World!");
}

• main.spock:

import path/to/otherfile.spock;

func main() {
demo();
}

Files

print(io::open("myfile.txt").read());
let file = io::open("myfile.txt")
// overwrite the file's contents
file.write("new content");
// append to the end of the file
file.append("appended content");