🌠 CreolLang

CreolLang or Creol is a programming language based on the Cape Verdian Creole. It was made to be easy for anyone who understands Cape Verdean Creole while keeping the same versatility as some other languages, such as C, Go, and Rust.

Project status

Under development.

Description

The syntax of this programming language was initially based on C, Go, and Rust, but other programming languages such as Liquid played a good role in the initial design.

For more concrete specifications about the language, you are recommended to read the CreolLang Language Specification.

The file extension of the CreolLang programming language is .kl (representing the word Kriol or Kriolu which is how Creol or Creole is pronounced in Cape Verdian's Creole) and the compiler's name is creol.

Installation

It isn't installable on any OS yet, but it still can be tested using a Unix-based operating system. It depends on clang++ or g++ to compile the source code, and bison and flex to compile the language rules.

If you are on a Debian (or Ubuntu) based Linux operating system you can install the dependencies using the following command:

apt install make flex bison g++ clang

NOTE: now pre-generated parser and scanner codes are provided in the repository, so, flex and bison can be omitted from the installation above, but if you are planning to make changes to the parser or scanner rules, they will still be necessary.

After installing the dependencies, compile the compiler using:

make

For a release build use:

make release

The result of the compilation will be an executable named creol which you can execute using:

./creol

Usage

The first thing to do after compiling the compiler is to execute the help command:

./creol --help

After executing that command you may see the usage section and some of its options.

An example of how it could be used is to compile one of the examples files in the examples folder:

./creol examples/example03.kl

You may see the code in example03.crl converted to the C language code on the terminal.

To build the code you should use the -b or --build flag:

./creol examples/example03.kl -b

Then execute the compiled code with:

./a.out

Currently, the compiler has only a few usage options and may be extended to additional tooling and improvements in future releases.

License

All the code and specifications of the CreolLang programming language are currently under the MIT License.