The Phix Programming Language

Welcome to the Phix 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:

• rzuckerm

Description

According to the Phix Official Site, the aims of Phix are as follows:

• Create programs that are easy to write and maintain.
• Make it easier to find the location of compile-time and run-time errors (the official site says "bugs", but I think this is the actually intent).
• Allow programmers to focus on solutions instead of solving the solution.
• Create programs that are easy to read and understand.

Phix was created by Pete Lomax. Phix is largely based on Euphoria and is almost completely compatible with Euphoria. Pete has this to say as to why he created this language:

Phix was born out of frustration at waiting 18 months for a new release, only to find the problem was still there.

You may be wondering as to the reason for this name. According to the Phix Official Site:

Phix is Pete’s Self Hosted Hybrid Interpreter/Compiler. pshhic was not the best of acronyms, plus phiX is the name of the first ever manmade lifeform artifically created from scratch in a laboratory, which seems rather appropriate for a self-hosted compiler

Phix has the same four data types as Euphoria:

• object - Base data type
• atom - A 31-bit signed integer or 64-bit floating point number depending upon the value stored. This is actually called number in the official documentation, but atom is still accepted.
• integer - A 31-bit in signed integer
• sequence - A list of values. This list can be comprised of atoms (numbers) or other sequences

However, it adds a fifth data type:

• string - A sequence of characters or raw binary data

Unlike Euphoria, Phix provides short-circuited ternary operators. For example, the iif function in Euphoria will evaluate both the true and false expressions and select the appropriate value. In other words, this code in Euphoria will call both foo and bar and then return the value to x depending upon whether x is non-zero or not:

integer foo_or_bar = iff(x, foo(), bar())

In Phix, this can be written like this:

integer foo_or_bar = iff(x ? foo() : bar())

Only if x is non-zero will foo be called; otherwise, bar will be called.

Here's a short summary of some of the other language features that Phix offers over Euphoria (just to name a few):

• Data structures
• Classes
• Exception handling
• Associative arrays

I'll have to admit, at first I just dismissed Phix as a knock-off of Euphoria, but after doing some more research, I have to admit this Phix is definitely worth further study!

If you'd like more information about this language, please see the Phix documentation.

Articles

• Baklava in Phix
• Hello World in Phix