The Arkscript Programming Language

Welcome to the Arkscript page! Here, you'll find a description of the language as well as a list of sample programs in that language.

This article was written by:

• Alexandre Plateau

Description

ArkScript is

• small: the core fit under 8000 lines of code ; also small in terms of keywords (only 9)
• a scripting language: very easy to embed it in your projects. Registering your own functions in the language is made easy
• portable: a unique bytecode which can be run everywhere the virtual machine is
• a functional language: every parameter is passed by value, everything is immutable unless specified
• powerful: provides closures and explicit capture
• promoting functionalities before performances: expressiveness often brings more productivity, though performances aren't left behind
• a Lisp inspired language, with fewer parentheses: [...] is expanded to (list ...) and {...} to (begin ...)
• extensible: supports C++ module to use it in the language, adding functionalities

Also, it has:

• macros: if/else, values, and functions
• tail call optimization
• a REPL with autocompletion and coloration

Example:

(let fibo (fun (n)
    (if (< n 2)
        n
        (+ (fibo (- n 1)) (fibo (- n 2))))))

(print (fibo 28))  # display 317811

On the first line:

• we define a variable named fibo, using the let keyword
• we define its value as a function with fun, taking a single argument, n

On the second line, we check if n is less than 2 (all functions and keywords are always after an opened paren ().

If the condition is true, on line 3 we return the value of n.

Otherwise, on line 4, we return the addition of (fibo (- n 1)) and (fibo (- n 2)).

Then on line 6 we call print with the function call (fibo 28) as its argument.

Articles

There is 1 article:

• Hello World in Arkscript