Demonstration programming language for a compilers course.
Welcome to PL1. PL1 (for "programming language 1," i.e., a first programming language from the creator's point of view, is a simple, imperative-style programming language. PL1 is in the C tradition, but offers the following somewhat distinctive features:
- A syntactic distinction between functions, which return values, and procedures, which take actions. Currently, PL1 does not prevent functions fromhaving side effects, but restrictions are planned to prevent functionsn from writing directly to global variables.
- A syntax that more clearly distinguishes assignment, using an arrow symbol, from equality testing, which uses mostly the same symbols as C. (The not equal symbol is ~= . The logical operators are the English words and, or, and not.)
- Multidimensional arrays are automatically allocated on the heap and deleted when they go out of scope (not currently implemented).
This programming language is very much a work in progress, and implementation has only begun. So far, compilation targets an intermediate representation designed to approximate x86_64 Assembly. The plan is to generate x86_64 Assembly directly, without an intermediate phase.
Amittai Aviram [email protected]