https://github.com/jackspirou/orson

Compiler for the programming language Orson, with documentation and examples.
https://github.com/jackspirou/orson

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Compiler for the programming language Orson, with documentation and examples.

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/jackspirou/orson
• Owner: jackspirou
• License: other
• Created: 2014-04-27T20:29:45.000Z (about 12 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2014-04-27T21:29:59.000Z (about 12 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-01-23T12:41:06.699Z (over 1 year ago)
• Language: C
• Size: 2.6 MB
• Stars: 0
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README
  • License: LICENSE

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README

          
                                     ORSON

                                 James B. Moen

                               January 21, 2014

0. Introduction.

Orson is a small, general purpose  programming language, designed to be used by

individuals and  small groups.   It emphasizes efficiency,  expressiveness, and

extensibility,  allowing access to  low level  representations of  objects like

that of the programming  language C. Its name is not an  acronym, so it doesn’t

appear  in capital  letters. Orson  is not  named after  any person,  place, or

thing.

Orson  programs are  made up  of expressions  that work  in two  phases, called

transformation and  execution.  During  transformation, Orson applies  forms to

produce new  expressions. Forms  are similar  to macros, but  are written  in a

lexically scoped applicative language  that can perform arbitrary computations.

During  execution, Orson evaluates  the expressions  that were  produced during

transformation.

Orson is currently  implemented so that transformation occurs  at compile time,

and execution occurs at run time. This allows writing with forms in an abstract

and general way, while still  producing efficient programs.  For example, forms

can  be used as  inline substitutes  for some  procedures.  Most  operators are

implemented as  forms, so  they can  be redefined. Abstract  data types  can be

implemented as  forms that take  types as their  arguments and return  types as

their results. Control structures can be implemented as higher-order forms that

take forms as arguments and return forms as their results.

Orson was developed on Intel x86 computers running Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux,

so it should  work on similar systems. The Orson compiler  itself is written in

GNU C.  It  translates Orson source programs to equivalent  GNU C programs, and

then invokes the GNU C compiler GCC to compile them.  Orson is distributed with

many  accompanying programs,  most of  which are  themselves written  in Orson.

These were written to test the Orson language and its compiler.

1. Licensing.

Orson and  its accompanying  programs are free  software: you  can redistribute

them and/or  modify them under the terms  of the GNU General  Public License as

published by the Free Software Foundation,  either version 3 of the License, or

(at your option) any later version.

Orson and its accompanying programs are  distributed in the hope that they will

be  useful, but  WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY; without  even the  implied  warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public

License for more details.

You should  have received a copy of  the GNU General Public  License along with

Orson and its accompanying programs. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

2. Contents.

These directories contain the Orson compiler and its example programs.

    apps/        Various small applications.

    bracy/       Simple document compiler that produces HTML files.

    eg/          Generate example strings from context-free grammars.

    library/     Orson library.

    licenses/    GNU General Public Licenses.

    orson/       Orson compiler.

    ox/          Cross-reference generator for Orson source programs.

    scam/        Interpreter for a toy Scheme-like language.

    tlh/         Make two-level perfect hash functions for string keys.

These files contain documentation and other supporting material.

    README       What you're reading now.

    Readme.by    Bracy source for Readme.html.

    Readme.html  Long HTML version of README.

    Test         Compile Orson source files for debugging.

    tech/        Orson technical reports.

Orson’s example programs and  documentation contain special characters. Without

proper rendering support,  you may see question marks,  boxes, or other symbols

in place of these characters.