A procedural programming language with a simple and concise syntax, implicit but strong typing via type inference, and built-in unit testing.
These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.
Start out by building the compiler using Gradle. This project makes use of the Gradle wrapper so installing Gradle is not necessary.
./gradlew build
A script is provided to compile any Less-Java program, and there are several
examples in the tests/ directory. Compiling is fairly straightforward.
./compile.sh <file-name>
For example,
./compile.sh tests/fact.lj
It is possible to just run the most recently compiled program, or run a specific previously compiled Less-Java program.
Ensure that the program you wish to run has already been compiled following the instructions above. To run the most recently compiled or ran program, simply type:
./run.sh
To run a specific Less-Java program, use the name of the file you compiled. The extension is optional. For example:
./run.sh fact.lj
You will need to make sure that your program has a main() method if you want to
run it. If it does not have a main() method, you will receive an error similar
to the following.
Error: Main method not found in class Main, please define the main method as:
public static void main(String[] args)
or a JavaFX application class must extend javafx.application.Application
You can also compile and run a Less-Java program with a single instruction using the go script. It works the same way as compilation:
./go.sh tests/fact.lj
##Testing
Ensure that the file you wish to run the test from has been compiled following the instructions above. Then simply run:
./test.sh
It is possible to run all the tests in the tests/ directory and to set the
expected output for any of those tests.
To set the expected output to the output from a particular execution of the program, run the following:
./dotests.sh -s <file-name>
This will update or set the output for that program to the output from that execution. This can be used to change the expected output for programs that take input and then displays the input (or uses it in a way that changes the output).
To run all sample programs in the tests/ directory against their expected
corresponding outputs in tests/outputs/, you can run the following:
./dotests.sh -r tests
Less-Java can be distributed by running ./distro.sh. The files to distribute
will be located in the distribution/ directory.
Contributions are welcome. Issues with the 'help wanted' tag that are not assigned are open to be worked on. If you have ideas or suggestions that are not already issues, please create an issue to discuss the feature before beginning work. Please open a pull request to have your changes merged.
For information on working on this project as part of an honors thesis, reach out to Dr. Lam.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3.
For more information, see the LICENSE file.
If you use this project in an academic project, please cite the following paper:
Paper: Zamua O. Nasrawt and Michael O. Lam. 2019. Less-Java, more learning: language design for introductory programming. J. Comput. Sci. Coll. 34, 3 (January 2019), 64-72. ACM DL