Gabl

A (hopefully very) simple programming language compiling down to a hideous language nobody should ever have to write, read, parse, or stumble across. Gabl's main purpose is to support easier extensions than GAB, type safety, and scope.

Language Features (planned)

A BNF description of Gabl can be found in docs/bnf.md.

Gabl will have six primitive types: int, float, str, bool, date, null. There will be a primitive record type and arrays.

Gabl may eventually support higher-order functions, and some basic error handling. However, the main focus is on better clarity of syntax, and on implementing scope.

Adding modules from GAB, once the main control structures and such have been determined, should be easy. They will be described in a translation file, using YAML (see docs/translation_files.md.) This will also allow for dyadic/monadic operator overriding. (Since operators are defined in an include file, just as all other functions.)

Example

Just as a quick example of what I imagine Gabl to look like:

Printing:

null sub hello(str name) {
  Msg("Hello, " + name);
}

Fibonacci sequence:

int sub fib(int limit) {
  int[] ret <- [1, 1];
  int a <- 1;
  int b <- 1;
  int c <- a + b;

  while (c < limit) {
    ret ++ c;
    a <- b;
    b <- c;
    c <- a + b;
  }

  return ret;
}

Error checking:

import stdlib;

null sub throwsError() {
  throw 'Bad programming problem';
}

null sub handleError(str error) {
  Msg(error);
}

null sub main() {
  handle(handleError) {
    throwsError();
  }
}