Collaps

Collaps is a experimental programming language to prove that a stack based high level language is possible.

DISCLAIMER: work in progress.

The collaps algorithm

Collaps is less of an interpreted scripting language and more of a stack based virtual machine. But virtual machines are low level. This is where the collaps algorithm comes in. When a function is parsed, it is placed on the stack as a first class object and whenever the correct number of arguments sorround it, the function is invoked. This results in interesting syntax-quirks like:

1 2 + 3 ==      # typical stack based (postfix) languages would look like this
1 + 2 == 3      # this would work only in higher level languages
== + 1 2 3      # typical prefix languages would look like this

With collaps though, all of these will result in a true value. Of course, one would favor the middle one.

Most assembly languages have a concept of base pointer. This is the address of the top of the stack. In collaps the base pointer is altered dinamically by parentheses and commas.

print(1 + 2)

If the parentheses were not there, print would be eagerly invoked when 1 is pushed, so only that would be printed. But ( creates a new base pointer, , sets the last base pointer to the current top of the stack, and ) resets the base pointer to the previous one.

Parsing lists is easily implemented with this concept. The only difference is that [ creates a completely new stack, and ] pushes the current stack as a list to the previous one.

Build

Collaps uses the cuilt, so to build it just run:

cc project.c -o project # or any other c compiler. You won't need to compile `project.c` ever again
./project build

This produces a binary that can be executed by either ./bin/debug/collaps or ./project run.

Test

./project test

For now, see the test folder for examples too.

Usage

collaps [INPUT]

INPUT is the file to evaluate. The extension of the file containing collaps code should be .laps. When INPUT is not provided, collaps enters interactive mode.

./project run       # or ./bin/debug/collaps
> "Hello, World!"
> print
Hello, World!
>