nali

nali is a programming language I created for fun. It is largely unfinished, unstable, and unusable for any real tasks. It is a toy and nothing more.

Basic Usage

You can perform basic math almost like you would on a calculator,

>> 2 + 3
5

nali uses greedy evaluation similar to Smalltalk, so be aware of order of operations.

>> 2 + 3 * 5
25
>> 2 + (3 * 5)
17

Messages are identified by a leading period, with preceding whitespace being optional. +,-,*,/, and % are just aliases to .add, .sub, .mul, .div, and .mod.

>> 1 .add 2
3
>> 1.add 2.mul 3
9

In the last example, the integer 1 is passed the message .add, which returns the add method belonging to it. This method is executed with the argument 2, which returns the integer 3. This process continues until there are no more terms remaining in the expression.

Parenthesis represent nested expressions, and can be used to enforce order of operations or invoke methods that take no arguments. For example, if an object foo had a method bar that took no arguments and returned 5:

>> foo .bar
[function]
>> (foo .bar)
5

Defining Variables

Most objects execute with one argument, which is either a message or a symbol. Note: functions are a special type of object that can execute with any numbers of arguments. Symbols are used to define instance variables of an object, which can then be accessed by sending the corresponding message.

>> foo :bar 5
>> foo .bar
5

There is always a reference to the current namespace called def which can be used to define variables.

>> def :foo 3
>> foo
3

Functions

Functions are created using literals, and resemble the lambda syntax of Python / the code blocks of Smalltalk.

>> def :increment [|x| x + 1]
>> increment 3
4

Objects

In nali, everything is an object. Unlike many object-oriented languages, however, nali does not have classes. Instead, you can create a new object by cloning an existing object. This is done with the new function.

>> def :foo (new object)

Lists

A list can be defined by using the literal notation as follows:

>> def :primes { 2 3 5 7 11 }

You can operate on a list by passing a single argument function to the list's do method.

>> primes .do [|x| print x]
2
3
5
7
11

Control Flow

If statements can be implemented using the ternary if function.

>> def :max [|x y| if [x > y] x y]
>> max 5 7
7

Running Tests

The test suite for nali can be run with Testify using testify tests.