flang 0.1.1

A simple stack-based language for teaching programming concepts.

# Flang

A stack-based programming language for teaching basic concepts.

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Flang is an overly-simple programming language.

It’s intended for teaching, but isn’t quite complete yet.

For now, this is the feature list.

• [X] Number type: Int

• [X] Number type: Float

• [ ] Number type: Rational

• [X] Function type

• [X] String type (UTF-8)

• [X] Human-readable error messages, designed for beginners.

• [-] As much parse-time safety as is possible.

• [ ] Loops? (This may not happen, as we can push functions to the stack)

• [ ] Conditionals

• [ ] Swap function, to rearrange the stack

• [ ] Slice function, to more easily rearrange large parts of the stack

• [X] Print function, including using special characters inside strings

• [X] Print/literal function, not including using special characters inside strings

• [X] Print/stack function, for displaying the stack

• [X] Exit function

• [X] Reset function, to set the stack back to nothing

• [X] Reverse function, to rearrange the stack

• [X] Push function, for placing typed objects on the stack

• [X] Add function, for mathematics or combining strings

• [X] Take function, for mathematics

• [X] Times function, for mathematics

• [X] Divide function, for mathematics

• [X] Pop function, for executing functions on the stack

• [X] Peek function, for executing functions on the stack

• [X] Drop function, for not executing functions on the stack

• [X] Read-Eval-Print-Loop

• [X] Ability to execute a file

• [X] Comments. Can be nested.

• [ ] User functions.

• [ ] String Library for working with strings.

• [ ] Help function

• [ ] Interactive Tutorial function

• [ ] Documentation

## Decisions to make:

• [ ] Case insensitivity. Should Flang be case-sensitive or not?

• [X] Indexing. Flang will be 1-indexed, to make new adoption easier.

• [ ] User Functions. What kind of shape should these take? How could they be written?

• [ ] Hash Table Type. Do we need it? How would it be used?

• [ ] Mini-Stack Type. Do we need it? How would it be used? (Think Linked-List)

• [ ] A library of tools for strings is needed. But, it needs to be defined.

• [ ] Semantic Versioning. What API will be covered by semver?

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## Install

Don’t.

This is alpha-software, and breaking is going to happen a lot.

The documentation that is vitally needed, isn’t anywhere near ready for the public.

Right… So, if you’re insisting on ignoring all that:

The latest release can be installed via pip:

pip install flang

Or, you can install from the git repository to get all the very latest changes:

git clone https://gitlab.com/shakna-israel/flang.git cd flang python3 setup.py install

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## Usage

You can explore Flang in two ways:

If you have a file filled with Flang commands:

flang filename

Or, you can enter the interactive Read-Evaluate-Print Loop:

flang repl