Basalt

This repository hosts an interpreter for the Basalt programming language. In the future, the goal is to evolve this project into an all-in-one bundle made of an interpreter, a compiler, and a debugger. Basalt is designed to be compiled directly to machine code, and offers all the features a low level language would, while still being able to be interpreted like languages like Python or Ruby (enhancing portability, and reducing wasted time by removing the need to perform a full compilation of your code-base just to run unit-tests).

Installation (Building from source)

In order to install Basalt, you have to build it from source. By default, the build process tries to use clang++, but you can change that to make it use g++ instead if you so desire. Either way c++20 or higher is required.

$$ git clone https://www.github.com/fDero/Basalt
$$ cd Basalt
$$ make build

Hello World

To make your first hello-world program in Basalt, all it takes is to create a file with the .bt extension (in this case, it will be called hello.bt) containing the following code:

func main(){
    println("Hello world!");
}

Once you have the file set up, to run it just use the basalt -r hello.bt command in console.

$$ basalt -r hello.bt
$$ Hello world!

Types

Basalt is a strictly typed language, it has a C-style type system with Int, Float, Bool, Char, String as primitive types.

func main(){
    var x : Int = 6;
    var y : Float = 9.4;
    var f : Bool = false;
    var c : Char = 'z';
    var s : String = "hello world";
}

Recursion

Basalt supports recursion just like any other language, and a good way to show it is with the classic fibonacci example, consider the following code:

func fibo(n : Int){
    if (n < 2) {
        return 1;
    }
    else {
        return fibo(n-1) + fibo(n-2);
    }
}

func main(){
    println(fibo(6));
}

assuming the file is called fibo.bt, then it can be executed just like we did earlier with the hello-world example, using the basalt -r command.

$$ basalt -r fibo.bt
$$ 21