The Toy Programming Language is an imperative, bytecode-interpreted, embeddable scripting language. Rather than functioning independently, it serves as part of another program, the "host". This design allows for straightforward customization by both the host's developers and end users, achieved by exposing program logic through text files.

This repository holds the reference implementation for Toy version 2.x, written in C.

Nifty Features

Simple C-like/JS-like syntax
Intermediate AST representation
Strong, but optional type system
First-class functions and closures
Extensible with importable native code
Can re-direct output, error and assert failure messages
Open-Source under the Zlib license

Syntax

The following examples aren't fully functional yet, see Timetable.

//fizzbuzz example
for (var counter: int = 1; counter <= 100; i++) {
	var result: string = "";

	if (counter % 3 == 0) {
		result = result .. "fizz";
	}

	if (counter % 5 == 0) {
		result = result .. "buzz";
	}

	if (result != "") {
		print result;
	}
	else {
		print counter;
	}
}

//find the nth fibonacci number
fn fib(n: int) {
	if (n < 2) return n;
	return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);
}

for (var i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
	print i.toString() .. ":" .. fib(i).toString();
}

//closures!
fn makeCounter() {
	var count = 0;

	fn next() {
		return ++count;
	}

	return next;
}

var tally = makeCounter();

print tally(); //1
print tally(); //2
print tally(); //3

Timetable

Here's a flexible outline for the upcoming feature milestones. On each review date, I'll adjust my projections as needed.

Feature	Time Span	Review Date
Arrays & Tables	-	1st Jan ✅
Control Flow	2 weeks	15th Jan ✅
Functions	6 weeks*	26th Feb
Dot Operator & Slices	2 weeks	12th Mar
Native Libraries	2 weeks	26th Mar
Standard Libraries	2 weeks	9th Apr
Documentation	-	-

*Info about and strategies for missed milestones can be found on my blog here.

Building

Supported platforms are: linux-latest, windows-latest, macos-latest, using GitHub's standard runners.

Support for NetBSD is present, but not guaranteed.

To build the shared library, run make source.
To build the shared library and repl, run make repl.
To build and run the test suites, run make tests (make tests-gdb and make tests-valgrind options are also available).

Tools

Coming Soon - I want the main features mostly working first.

Documentation

The WIP documentation can be found here: https://v2.toylang.com/

License

This source code is covered by the Zlib license (see LICENSE.md).

Contributors and Special Thanks

@NishiOwO - Unofficial NetBSD support
@Gipson62 - v1 docs spell checking
@8051Enthusiast - fixAlignment() trick
@hiperiondev - v1 Disassembler, v1 porting support and feedback
@add00 - v1 Library support
@gruelingpine185 - Unofficial v1 MacOS support
@solar-mist - v1 Minor bugfixes
Various Anons - Feedback
@munificent - For writing the book that sparked my interest in langdev

Patreon Supporters

Seth A. Robinson

You can show your support and be listed here by joining my Patreon.