The ABS programing language

# A few technical details...

The ABS interpreter is built with Golang version 1.18, and is mostly based on the interpreter book (opens new window) written by Thorsten Ball (opens new window).

ABS is extremely different from Monkey, the "fictional" language the reader builds throughout the book, but the base structure (lexer, parser, evaluator) are still very much based on Thorsten's work.

# Why is ABS interpreted?

ABS' goal is to be a portable, pragmatic, concise, simple language: great performance comes second.

With this in mind, we made a deliberate choice to avoid compiling ABS code, as it would require additional complexity in the codebase, with very little benefits. Tell us, when was the last time you were interested in how many milliseconds it took to run a Bash script?

# Why Go?

There are multiple reasons Go is the ideal choice for ABS, in no particular order:

  • portability, as our goal is to be able to deliver ABS to multiple platforms without any hassle
  • performance, as ABS' itself is not big on performance: having the interpreter based on a fast platform allows us to recover something back
  • "strict" language, suitable for the purpose of making sure syntax / parser errors are easily caught
  • rich standard library, which allows to ship most of the ABS' interpreter without relying on many external dependencies

# Development & contributing

Please see github.com/abs-lang/abs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md (opens new window)

# Testing

# Interpreter Error Location

You can run the interpreter error location tests by invoking this bash script: tests/test-abs.sh. This script iterates over the test-parser.abs and test-eval.abs test scripts.

$ tests/test-abs.sh
=======================================
Test Parser
tests/test-parser.abs
 parser errors:
	no prefix parse function for '=' found
	[4:5]	m.a = 'abc'
	no prefix parse function for '=' found
	[7:5]	d/d = `command`;
	no prefix parse function for '=' found
	[10:5]	c/c = `command`
	no prefix parse function for '%' found
	[13:4]	b %% c
	no prefix parse function for '&&' found
	[22:1]	&&||!-/*5;
	no prefix parse function for '||' found
	[22:3]	&&||!-/*5;
	no prefix parse function for '/' found
	[22:7]	&&||!-/*5;
	no prefix parse function for '<=>' found
	[25:2]	<=>
	expected next token to be NUMBER, got , instead
	[44:2]	[1, 2];
	no prefix parse function for ',' found
	[44:3]	[1, 2];
	no prefix parse function for ']' found
	[44:6]	[1, 2];
	no prefix parse function for '%' found
	[68:2]	~%
	no prefix parse function for '-=' found
	[70:1]	-=
	no prefix parse function for '/=' found
	[72:1]	/=
	no prefix parse function for '%=' found
	[74:1]	%=
	no prefix parse function for '^' found
	[79:2]	&^>><<
	no prefix parse function for '<<' found
	[79:5]	&^>><<
	Illegal token '$111'
	[80:1]	$111
	no prefix parse function for '$111' found
	[80:1]	$111
Exit code: 99

=======================================
Test Eval()
tests/test-eval.abs
ERROR: type mismatch: STRING + NUMBER
	[8:11]	    s = s + 1   # this is a comment
Exit code: 99

ERROR: invalid property 'junk' on type ARRAY
	[14:6]	    a.junk
Exit code: 99

ERROR: index operator not supported: f(x) {x} on HASH
	[19:20]	    {"name": "Abs"}[f(x) {x}];
Exit code: 99

# String tests

String handling tests can be run from abs tests/test-strings.abs:

$ abs tests/test-strings.abs
=====================
>>> Testing string with expanded LFs:
echo("a\nb\nc")
a
b
c
=====================
>>> Testing string with expanded TABs:
echo("a\tb\tc")
a	b	c
=====================
>>> Testing string with expanded CRs:
echo("a\rb\rc")
c
=====================
>>> Testing string with mixed expanded LFs and escaped LFs:
echo("a\\nb\\nc\n%s\n", "x\ny\nz")
a\\nb\\nc
x
y
z

=====================
>>> Testing string with multiple escapes:
echo("hel\\\\lo")
hel\\\\lo
=====================
>>> Testing split and join strings with expanded LFs:
s = split("a\nb\nc", "\n")
echo(s)
[a, b, c]
ss = join(s, "\n")
echo(ss)
a
b
c
=====================
>>> Testing split and join strings with literal LFs:
s = split('a\nb\nc', '\n')
echo(s)
[a, b, c]
ss = join(s, '\n')
echo(ss)
a\nb\nc

# Array and hash assignment tests

Array and hash assignment tests can be run from abs tests/test-assign-index.abs:

=====================
Test assignment to array indexed objects
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4]
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> a[0] = 99
[99, 2, 3, 4]
>>> a[1] += 10
[99, 12, 3, 4]
>>> a += [88]
[99, 12, 3, 4, 88]
>>> a[2] = "string"
[99, 12, string, 4, 88]
>>> a[6] = 66
[99, 12, string, 4, 88, null, 66]
>>> a[5] = 55
[99, 12, string, 4, 88, 55, 66]
=====================
Test assignment to hash indexed objects
>>> h = {"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3}
{a: 1, b: 2, c: 3}
>>> h["a"] = 99
{a: 99, b: 2, c: 3}
>>> h["a"] += 1
{a: 100, b: 2, c: 3}
>>> h += {"c": 33, "d": 44, "e": 55}
{a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 44, e: 55}
h["z"] = {"x": 10, "y": 20}
{a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 44, e: 55, z: {x: 10, y: 20}}
h["1.23"] = "string"
{1.23: string, a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 44, e: 55, z: {x: 10, y: 20}}
h.d = 99
{1.23: string, a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 99, e: 55, z: {x: 10, y: 20}}
h.d += 1
{1.23: string, a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 100, e: 55, z: {x: 10, y: 20}}
h.z.x = 66
{1.23: string, a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 100, e: 55, z: {x: 66, y: 20}}
h.f = 88
{1.23: string, a: 100, b: 2, c: 33, d: 100, e: 55, f: 88, z: {x: 66, y: 20}}
=====================
Error: assign to non-hash property
s = "string"
s.ok = true
ERROR: can only assign to hash property, got STRING
	[66:2]	s.ok = true
=====================
Error: add number to null hash property
h.g += 1
ERROR: type mismatch: NULL + NUMBER
	[72:5]	h.g += 1
=====================
Error: add number to null hash element
>>> h["g"] += 1
ERROR: type mismatch: NULL + NUMBER
	[78:8]	h["g"] += 1

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