mal README

The project's README from github.com/kanaka/mal. As one markdown file: README.md.

mal - Make a Lisp

Build and Test

Description

1. Mal is a Clojure inspired Lisp interpreter

2. Mal is a learning tool

Each implementation of mal is separated into 11 incremental, self-contained (and testable) steps that demonstrate core concepts of Lisp. The last step is capable of self-hosting (running the mal implementation of mal). See the make-a-lisp process guide.

The make-a-lisp steps are:

Each make-a-lisp step has an associated architectural diagram. That elements that are new for that step are highlighted in red. Here is the final architecture once step A is complete:

stepA_mal architecture

If you are interested in creating a mal implementation (or just interested in using mal for something) you are welcome to to join our Discord. In addition to the make-a-lisp process guide there is also a mal/make-a-lisp FAQ where I attempt to answer some common questions.

3. Mal is implemented in 89 languages (95 different implementations and 118 runtime modes)

Language Creator
Ada Chris Moore
Ada #2 Nicolas Boulenguez
GNU Awk Mitsuru Kariya
Bash 4 Joel Martin
BASIC (C64 & QBasic) Joel Martin
BBC BASIC V Ben Harris
C Joel Martin
C #2 Duncan Watts
C++ Stephen Thirlwall
C# Joel Martin
ChucK Vasilij Schneidermann
Clojure (Clojure & ClojureScript) Joel Martin
CoffeeScript Joel Martin
Common Lisp Iqbal Ansari
Crystal Linda_pp
D Dov Murik
Dart Harry Terkelsen
Elixir Martin Ek
Elm Jos van Bakel
Emacs Lisp Vasilij Schneidermann
Erlang Nathan Fiedler
ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) Joel Martin
F# Peter Stephens
Factor Jordan Lewis
Fantom Dov Murik
Fennel sogaiu
Forth Chris Houser
GNU Guile Mu Lei
GNU Smalltalk Vasilij Schneidermann
Go Joel Martin
Groovy Joel Martin
Hare Lou Woell
Haskell Joel Martin
Haxe (Neko, Python, C++, & JS) Joel Martin
Hy Joel Martin
Io Dov Murik
Janet sogaiu
Java Joel Martin
Java Truffle (Truffle/GraalVM) Matt McGill
JavaScript (Demo) Joel Martin
jq Ali MohammadPur
Julia Joel Martin
Kotlin Javier Fernandez-Ivern
LaTeX3 Nicolas Boulenguez
LiveScript Jos van Bakel
Logo Dov Murik
Lua Joel Martin
GNU Make Joel Martin
mal itself Joel Martin
MATLAB (GNU Octave & MATLAB) Joel Martin
miniMAL (Repo, Demo) Joel Martin
NASM Ben Dudson
Nim Dennis Felsing
Object Pascal Joel Martin
Objective C Joel Martin
OCaml Chris Houser
Perl Joel Martin
Perl 6 Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson
PHP Joel Martin
Picolisp Vasilij Schneidermann
Pike Dov Murik
PL/pgSQL (PostgreSQL) Joel Martin
PL/SQL (Oracle) Joel Martin
PostScript Joel Martin
PowerShell Joel Martin
Prolog Nicolas Boulenguez
PureScript mrsekut
Python2 Joel Martin
Python3 Gavin Lewis
RPython Joel Martin
R Joel Martin
Racket Joel Martin
Rexx Dov Murik
Ruby Joel Martin
Ruby #2 Ryan Cook
Rust Joel Martin
Scala Joel Martin
Scheme (R7RS) Vasilij Schneidermann
Skew Dov Murik
Standard ML Fabian Bergström
Swift 3 Joel Martin
Swift 4 陆遥
Swift 6 Oleg Montak
Tcl Dov Murik
TypeScript Masahiro Wakame
Vala Simon Tatham
VHDL Dov Murik
Vimscript Dov Murik
Visual Basic.NET Joel Martin
Visual Basic Script 刘百超
WebAssembly (wasm) Joel Martin
Wren Dov Murik
XSLT Ali MohammadPur
Yorick Dov Murik
Zig Josh Tobin

Presentations

Mal was presented publicly for the first time in a lightning talk at Clojure West 2014 (unfortunately there is no video). See examples/clojurewest2014.mal for the presentation that was given at the conference (yes, the presentation is a mal program).

At Midwest.io 2015, Joel Martin gave a presentation on Mal titled "Achievement Unlocked: A Better Path to Language Learning". Video, Slides.

More recently Joel gave a presentation on "Make Your Own Lisp Interpreter in 10 Incremental Steps" at LambdaConf 2016: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Slides.

Building/running implementations

The simplest way to run any given implementation is to use docker. Every implementation has a docker image pre-built with language dependencies installed. You can launch the REPL using a convenient target in the top level Makefile (where IMPL is the implementation directory name and stepX is the step to run):

make DOCKERIZE=1 "repl^IMPL^stepX"
    # OR stepA is the default step:
make DOCKERIZE=1 "repl^IMPL"

External / Alternate Implementations

The following implementations are maintained as separate projects:

HolyC

Rust

Swift 2

Q

Other mal Projects

Implementation Details

Ada

The Ada implementation was developed with GNAT 4.9 on debian. It also compiles unchanged on windows if you have windows versions of git, GNAT and (optionally) make. There are no external dependencies (readline not implemented).

cd impls/ada
make
./stepX_YYY

Ada.2

The second Ada implementation was developed with GNAT 8 and links with the GNU readline library.

cd impls/ada
make
./stepX_YYY

GNU awk

The GNU awk implementation of mal has been tested with GNU awk 4.1.1.

cd impls/gawk
gawk -O -f stepX_YYY.awk

Bash 4

cd impls/bash
bash stepX_YYY.sh

BASIC (C64 and QBasic)

The BASIC implementation uses a preprocessor that can generate BASIC code that is compatible with both C64 BASIC (CBM v2) or QBasic. The C64 mode has been tested with cbmbasic (the patched version is currently required to fix issues with line input) and the QBasic mode has been tested with FreeBASIC.

Generate C64 code and run it using cbmbasic:

cd impls/basic
make MODE=cbm stepX_YYY.bas
STEP=stepX_YYY basic_MODE=cbm ./run

Generate QBasic code, compile using FreeBASIC, and execute it:

cd impls/basic
make MODE=qbasic stepX_YYY.bas
make MODE=qbasic stepX_YYY
./stepX_YYY

Thanks to Steven Syrek for the original inspiration for this implementation.

BBC BASIC V

The BBC BASIC V implementation can run in the Brandy interpreter:

cd impls/bbc-basic
brandy -quit stepX_YYY.bbc

Or in ARM BBC BASIC V under RISC OS 3 or later:

*Dir bbc-basic.riscos
*Run setup
*Run stepX_YYY

C

The C implementation of mal requires the following libraries (lib and header packages): glib, libffi6, libgc, and either the libedit or GNU readline library.

cd impls/c
make
./stepX_YYY

C.2

The second C implementation of mal requires the following libraries (lib and header packages): libedit, libgc, libdl, and libffi.

cd impls/c.2
make
./stepX_YYY

C++

The C++ implementation of mal requires g++-4.9 or clang++-3.5 and a readline compatible library to build. See the cpp/README.md for more details:

cd impls/cpp
make
    # OR
make CXX=clang++-3.5
./stepX_YYY

C#

The C# implementation of mal has been tested on Linux using the Mono C# compiler (mcs) and the Mono runtime (version 2.10.8.1). Both are required to build and run the C# implementation.

cd impls/cs
make
mono ./stepX_YYY.exe

ChucK

The ChucK implementation has been tested with ChucK 1.3.5.2.

cd impls/chuck
./run

Clojure

For the most part the Clojure implementation requires Clojure 1.5, however, to pass all tests, Clojure 1.8.0-RC4 is required.

cd impls/clojure
lein with-profile +stepX trampoline run

CoffeeScript

sudo npm install -g coffee-script
cd impls/coffee
coffee ./stepX_YYY

Common Lisp

The implementation has been tested with SBCL, CCL, CMUCL, GNU CLISP, ECL and Allegro CL on Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 12.04, see the README for more details. Provided you have the dependencies mentioned installed, do the following to run the implementation

cd impls/common-lisp
make
./run

Crystal

The Crystal implementation of mal has been tested with Crystal 0.26.1.

cd impls/crystal
crystal run ./stepX_YYY.cr
    # OR
make   # needed to run tests
./stepX_YYY

D

The D implementation of mal was tested with GDC 4.8. It requires the GNU readline library.

cd impls/d
make
./stepX_YYY

Dart

The Dart implementation has been tested with Dart 1.20.

cd impls/dart
dart ./stepX_YYY

Emacs Lisp

The Emacs Lisp implementation of mal has been tested with Emacs 24.3 and 24.5. While there is very basic readline editing (<backspace> and C-d work, C-c cancels the process), it is recommended to use rlwrap.

cd impls/elisp
emacs -Q --batch --load stepX_YYY.el
# with full readline support
rlwrap emacs -Q --batch --load stepX_YYY.el

Elixir

The Elixir implementation of mal has been tested with Elixir 1.0.5.

cd impls/elixir
mix stepX_YYY
# Or with readline/line editing functionality:
iex -S mix stepX_YYY

Elm

The Elm implementation of mal has been tested with Elm 0.18.0

cd impls/elm
make stepX_YYY.js
STEP=stepX_YYY ./run

Erlang

The Erlang implementation of mal requires Erlang/OTP R17 and rebar to build.

cd impls/erlang
make
    # OR
MAL_STEP=stepX_YYY rebar compile escriptize # build individual step
./stepX_YYY

ES6 (ECMAScript 2015)

The ES6 / ECMAScript 2015 implementation uses the babel compiler to generate ES5 compatible JavaScript. The generated code has been tested with Node 0.12.4.

cd impls/es6
make
node build/stepX_YYY.js

F#

The F# implementation of mal has been tested on Linux using the Mono F# compiler (fsharpc) and the Mono runtime (version 3.12.1). The mono C# compiler (mcs) is also necessary to compile the readline dependency. All are required to build and run the F# implementation.

cd impls/fsharp
make
mono ./stepX_YYY.exe

Factor

The Factor implementation of mal has been tested with Factor 0.97 (factorcode.org).

cd impls/factor
FACTOR_ROOTS=. factor -run=stepX_YYY

Fantom

The Fantom implementation of mal has been tested with Fantom 1.0.70.

cd impls/fantom
make lib/fan/stepX_YYY.pod
STEP=stepX_YYY ./run

Fennel

The Fennel implementation of mal has been tested with Fennel version 0.9.1 on Lua 5.4.

cd impls/fennel
fennel ./stepX_YYY.fnl

Forth

cd impls/forth
gforth stepX_YYY.fs

GNU Guile 2.1+

cd impls/guile
guile -L ./ stepX_YYY.scm

GNU Smalltalk

The Smalltalk implementation of mal has been tested with GNU Smalltalk 3.2.91.

cd impls/gnu-smalltalk
./run

Go

The Go implementation of mal requires that go is installed on on the path. The implementation has been tested with Go 1.3.1.

cd impls/go
make
./stepX_YYY

Groovy

The Groovy implementation of mal requires Groovy to run and has been tested with Groovy 1.8.6.

cd impls/groovy
make
groovy ./stepX_YYY.groovy

Hare

The hare implementation was tested against Hare 0.25.2.

cd impls/hare
make
./stepX_YYY

Haskell

The Haskell implementation requires the ghc compiler version 7.10.1 or later and also the Haskell parsec and readline (or editline) packages.

cd impls/haskell
make
./stepX_YYY

Haxe (Neko, Python, C++ and JavaScript)

The Haxe implementation of mal requires Haxe version 3.2 to compile. Four different Haxe targets are supported: Neko, Python, C++, and JavaScript.

cd impls/haxe
# Neko
make all-neko
neko ./stepX_YYY.n
# Python
make all-python
python3 ./stepX_YYY.py
# C++
make all-cpp
./cpp/stepX_YYY
# JavaScript
make all-js
node ./stepX_YYY.js

Hy

The Hy implementation of mal has been tested with Hy 0.13.0.

cd impls/hy
./stepX_YYY.hy

Io

The Io implementation of mal has been tested with Io version 20110905.

cd impls/io
io ./stepX_YYY.io

Janet

The Janet implementation of mal has been tested with Janet version 1.12.2.

cd impls/janet
janet ./stepX_YYY.janet

Java 1.7

The Java implementation of mal requires maven2 to build.

cd impls/java
mvn compile
mvn -quiet exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=mal.stepX_YYY
    # OR
mvn -quiet exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=mal.stepX_YYY -Dexec.args="CMDLINE_ARGS"

Java, using Truffle for GraalVM

This Java implementation will run on OpenJDK, but can run as much as 30x faster on GraalVM thanks to the Truffle framework. It's been tested with OpenJDK 11, GraalVM CE 20.1.0, and GraalVM CE 21.1.0.

cd impls/java-truffle
./gradlew build
STEP=stepX_YYY ./run

JavaScript/Node

cd impls/js
npm install
node stepX_YYY.js

Julia

The Julia implementation of mal requires Julia 0.4.

cd impls/julia
julia stepX_YYY.jl

jq

Tested against version 1.6, with a lot of cheating in the IO department

cd impls/jq
STEP=stepA_YYY ./run
    # with Debug
DEBUG=true STEP=stepA_YYY ./run

Kotlin

The Kotlin implementation of mal has been tested with Kotlin 1.0.

cd impls/kotlin
make
java -jar stepX_YYY.jar

LaTeX3

The LaTeX3 implementation of mal has been tested with pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.24.

Self hosting is too slow for any sensible timeout, and crashes in step4, apparently because of hard-coded limitations.

Anybody working on this should uncomment the two lines of (slow) debugging options in the step file, and export DEBUG=1 (for more output than tests accept).

LiveScript

The LiveScript implementation of mal has been tested with LiveScript 1.5.

cd impls/livescript
make
node_modules/.bin/lsc stepX_YYY.ls

The Logo implementation of mal has been tested with UCBLogo 6.0.

cd impls/logo
logo stepX_YYY.lg

Lua

The Lua implementation of mal has been tested with Lua 5.3.5 The implementation requires luarocks to be installed.

cd impls/lua
make  # to build and link linenoise.so and rex_pcre.so
./stepX_YYY.lua

Mal

Running the mal implementation of mal involves running stepA of one of the other implementations and passing the mal step to run as a command line argument.

cd impls/IMPL
IMPL_STEPA_CMD ../mal/stepX_YYY.mal

GNU Make 3.81

cd impls/make
make -f stepX_YYY.mk

NASM

The NASM implementation of mal is written for x86-64 Linux, and has been tested with Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 and NASM version 2.11.05.

cd impls/nasm
make
./stepX_YYY

Nim 1.0.4

The Nim implementation of mal has been tested with Nim 1.0.4.

cd impls/nim
make
  # OR
nimble build
./stepX_YYY

Object Pascal

The Object Pascal implementation of mal has been built and tested on Linux using the Free Pascal compiler version 2.6.2 and 2.6.4.

cd impls/objpascal
make
./stepX_YYY

Objective C

The Objective C implementation of mal has been built and tested on Linux using clang/LLVM 3.6. It has also been built and tested on OS X using Xcode 7.

cd impls/objc
make
./stepX_YYY

OCaml 4.01.0

cd impls/ocaml
make
./stepX_YYY

MATLAB (GNU Octave and MATLAB)

The MatLab implementation has been tested with GNU Octave 4.2.1. It has also been tested with MATLAB version R2014a on Linux. Note that MATLAB is a commercial product.

cd impls/matlab
./stepX_YYY
octave -q --no-gui --no-history --eval "stepX_YYY();quit;"
matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -nojvm -r "stepX_YYY();quit;"
    # OR with command line arguments
octave -q --no-gui --no-history --eval "stepX_YYY('arg1','arg2');quit;"
matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -nojvm -r "stepX_YYY('arg1','arg2');quit;"

miniMAL

miniMAL is small Lisp interpreter implemented in less than 1024 bytes of JavaScript. To run the miniMAL implementation of mal you need to download/install the miniMAL interpreter (which requires Node.js).

cd impls/miniMAL
# Download miniMAL and dependencies
npm install
export PATH=`pwd`/node_modules/minimal-lisp/:$PATH
# Now run mal implementation in miniMAL
miniMAL ./stepX_YYY

Perl 5

The Perl 5 implementation should work with perl 5.19.3 and later.

For readline line editing support, install Term::ReadLine::Perl or Term::ReadLine::Gnu from CPAN.

cd impls/perl
perl stepX_YYY.pl

Perl 6

The Perl 6 implementation was tested on Rakudo Perl 6 2016.04.

cd impls/perl6
perl6 stepX_YYY.pl

PHP 5.3

The PHP implementation of mal requires the php command line interface to run.

cd impls/php
php stepX_YYY.php

Picolisp

The Picolisp implementation requires libreadline and Picolisp 3.1.11 or later.

cd impls/picolisp
./run

Pike

The Pike implementation was tested on Pike 8.0.

cd impls/pike
pike stepX_YYY.pike

PL/pgSQL (PostgreSQL SQL Procedural Language)

The PL/pgSQL implementation of mal requires a running PostgreSQL server (the "kanaka/mal-test-plpgsql" docker image automatically starts a PostgreSQL server). The implementation connects to the PostgreSQL server and create a database named "mal" to store tables and stored procedures. The wrapper script uses the psql command to connect to the server and defaults to the user "postgres" but this can be overridden with the PSQL_USER environment variable. A password can be specified using the PGPASSWORD environment variable. The implementation has been tested with PostgreSQL 9.4.

cd impls/plpgsql
./wrap.sh stepX_YYY.sql
    # OR
PSQL_USER=myuser PGPASSWORD=mypass ./wrap.sh stepX_YYY.sql

PL/SQL (Oracle SQL Procedural Language)

The PL/SQL implementation of mal requires a running Oracle DB server (the "kanaka/mal-test-plsql" docker image automatically starts an Oracle Express server). The implementation connects to the Oracle server to create types, tables and stored procedures. The default SQL*Plus logon value (username/password@connect_identifier) is "system/oracle" but this can be overridden with the ORACLE_LOGON environment variable. The implementation has been tested with Oracle Express Edition 11g Release 2. Note that any SQL*Plus connection warnings (user password expiration, etc) will interfere with the ability of the wrapper script to communicate with the DB.

cd impls/plsql
./wrap.sh stepX_YYY.sql
    # OR
ORACLE_LOGON=myuser/mypass@ORCL ./wrap.sh stepX_YYY.sql

PostScript Level 2/3

The PostScript implementation of mal requires Ghostscript to run. It has been tested with Ghostscript 9.10.

cd impls/ps
gs -q -dNODISPLAY -I./ stepX_YYY.ps

PowerShell

The PowerShell implementation of mal requires the PowerShell script language. It has been tested with PowerShell 6.0.0 Alpha 9 on Linux.

cd impls/powershell
powershell ./stepX_YYY.ps1

Prolog

The Prolog implementation uses some constructs specific to SWI-Prolog, includes readline support and has been tested on Debian GNU/Linux with version 8.2.1.

cd impls/prolog
swipl stepX_YYY

PureScript

The PureScript implementation requires the spago compiler version 0.20.2.

cd impls/purs
make
node ./stepX_YYY.js

Python2

This implementation only uses python2 features, but avoids incompatibilities with python3.

Python3

This implementation is checked for style and types (flake8, pylint, mypy). It reports all errors with details. It demonstrates iterators, decorators, functional tools, chain maps, dataclasses, introspection, match statements, assignement expressions.

RPython

You must have rpython on your path (included with pypy).

cd impls/rpython
make        # this takes a very long time
./stepX_YYY

R

The R implementation of mal requires R (r-base-core) to run.

cd impls/r
make libs  # to download and build rdyncall
Rscript stepX_YYY.r

Racket (5.3)

The Racket implementation of mal requires the Racket compiler/interpreter to run.

cd impls/racket
./stepX_YYY.rkt

Rexx

The Rexx implementation of mal has been tested with Regina Rexx 3.6.

cd impls/rexx
make
rexx -a ./stepX_YYY.rexxpp

Ruby (1.9+)

cd impls/ruby
ruby stepX_YYY.rb

Ruby #2

A second Ruby implementation with the following goals:

cd impls/ruby.2
ruby stepX_YYY.rb

Rust (1.38+)

The rust implementation of mal requires the rust compiler and build tool (cargo) to build.

cd impls/rust
cargo run --release --bin stepX_YYY

Scala

Install scala and sbt (http://www.scala-sbt.org/0.13/tutorial/Installing-sbt-on-Linux.html):

cd impls/scala
sbt 'run-main stepX_YYY'
    # OR
sbt compile
scala -classpath target/scala*/classes stepX_YYY

Scheme (R7RS)

The Scheme implementation of MAL has been tested with Chibi-Scheme 0.10, Kawa 3.1.1, Gauche 0.9.6, CHICKEN 5.1.0, Sagittarius 0.9.7, Cyclone 0.32.0 (Git version) and Foment 0.4 (Git version). You should be able to get it running on other conforming R7RS implementations after figuring out how libraries are loaded and adjusting the Makefile and run script accordingly.

cd impls/scheme
# chibi
scheme_MODE=chibi ./run
# kawa
make kawa
scheme_MODE=kawa ./run
# gauche
scheme_MODE=gauche ./run
# chicken
make chicken
scheme_MODE=chicken ./run
# sagittarius
scheme_MODE=sagittarius ./run
# cyclone
make cyclone
scheme_MODE=cyclone ./run
# foment
scheme_MODE=foment ./run

Skew

The Skew implementation of mal has been tested with Skew 0.7.42.

cd impls/skew
make
node stepX_YYY.js

Standard ML (Poly/ML, MLton, Moscow ML)

The Standard ML implementation of mal requires an SML97 implementation. The Makefile supports Poly/ML, MLton, Moscow ML, and has been tested with Poly/ML 5.8.1, MLton 20210117, and Moscow ML version 2.10.

cd impls/sml
# Poly/ML
make sml_MODE=polyml
./stepX_YYY
# MLton
make sml_MODE=mlton
./stepX_YYY
# Moscow ML
make sml_MODE=mosml
./stepX_YYY

Swift 3

The Swift 3 implementation of mal requires the Swift 3.0 compiler. It has been tested with Swift 3 Preview 3.

cd impls/swift3
make
./stepX_YYY

Swift 4

The Swift 4 implementation of mal requires the Swift 4.0 compiler. It has been tested with Swift 4.2.3 release.

cd impls/swift4
make
./stepX_YYY

Swift 5

The Swift 5 implementation of mal requires the Swift 5.0 compiler. It has been tested with Swift 5.1.1 release.

cd impls/swift6
swift run stepX_YYY

Tcl 8.6

The Tcl implementation of mal requires Tcl 8.6 to run. For readline line editing support, install tclreadline.

cd impls/tcl
tclsh ./stepX_YYY.tcl

TypeScript

The TypeScript implementation of mal requires the TypeScript 2.2 compiler. It has been tested with Node.js v6.

cd impls/ts
make
node ./stepX_YYY.js

Vala

The Vala implementation of mal has been tested with the Vala 0.40.8 compiler. You will need to install valac and libreadline-dev or equivalent.

cd impls/vala
make
./stepX_YYY

VHDL

The VHDL implementation of mal has been tested with GHDL 0.29.

cd impls/vhdl
make
./run_vhdl.sh ./stepX_YYY

Vimscript

The Vimscript implementation of mal requires Vim 8.0 to run.

cd impls/vimscript
./run_vimscript.sh ./stepX_YYY.vim

Visual Basic.NET

The VB.NET implementation of mal has been tested on Linux using the Mono VB compiler (vbnc) and the Mono runtime (version 2.10.8.1). Both are required to build and run the VB.NET implementation.

cd impls/vb
make
mono ./stepX_YYY.exe

Visual Basic Script

The VBScript implementation of mal has been tested on Windows 10 1909. install.vbs can help you install the requirements (.NET 2.0 3.0 3.5). If you havn't install .NET 2.0 3.0 3.5, it will popup a window for installation. If you already installed that, it will do nothing.

cd impls\vbs
install.vbs
cscript -nologo stepX_YYY.vbs

WebAssembly (wasm)

The WebAssembly implementation is written in Wam (WebAssembly Macro language) and runs under several different non-web embeddings (runtimes): node, wasmtime, wasmer, wax, wace, warpy.

cd impls/wasm
# node
make wasm_MODE=node
./run.js ./stepX_YYY.wasm
# wasmtime
make wasm_MODE=wasmtime
wasmtime --dir=./ --dir=../ --dir=/ ./stepX_YYY.wasm
# wasmer
make wasm_MODE=wasmer
wasmer run --dir=./ --dir=../ --dir=/ ./stepX_YYY.wasm
# wax
make wasm_MODE=wax
wax ./stepX_YYY.wasm
# wace
make wasm_MODE=wace_libc
wace ./stepX_YYY.wasm
# warpy
make wasm_MODE=warpy
warpy --argv --memory-pages 256 ./stepX_YYY.wasm

XSLT

The XSLT implementation of mal is written with XSLT 3 and tested on Saxon 9.9.1.6 Home Edition.

cd impls/xslt
STEP=stepX_YY ./run

Wren

The Wren implementation of mal was tested on Wren 0.2.0.

cd impls/wren
wren ./stepX_YYY.wren

Yorick

The Yorick implementation of mal was tested on Yorick 2.2.04.

cd impls/yorick
yorick -batch ./stepX_YYY.i

Zig

The Zig implementation of mal was tested on Zig 0.5.

cd impls/zig
zig build stepX_YYY

Running tests

The top level Makefile has a number of useful targets to assist with implementation development and testing. The help target provides a list of the targets and options:

make help

Functional tests

The are almost 800 generic functional tests (for all implementations) in the tests/ directory. Each step has a corresponding test file containing tests specific to that step. The runtest.py test harness launches a Mal step implementation and then feeds the tests one at a time to the implementation and compares the output/return value to the expected output/return value.

make test
make "test^IMPL"

# e.g.
make "test^clojure"
make "test^js"
make "test^stepX"

# e.g.
make "test^step2"
make "test^step7"
make "test^IMPL^stepX"

# e.g
make "test^ruby^step3"
make "test^ps^step4"

Self-hosted functional tests

make MAL_IMPL=IMPL "test^mal^step2"

# e.g.
make "test^mal^step2"   # js is default
make MAL_IMPL=ruby "test^mal^step2"
make MAL_IMPL=python3 "test^mal^step2"

Starting the REPL

make "repl^IMPL^stepX"

# e.g
make "repl^ruby^step3"
make "repl^ps^step4"
make "repl^IMPL"

# e.g
make "repl^ruby"
make "repl^ps"
make MAL_IMPL=IMPL "repl^mal^stepX"

# e.g.
make "repl^mal^step2"   # js is default
make MAL_IMPL=ruby "repl^mal^step2"
make MAL_IMPL=python3 "repl^mal"

Performance tests

Warning: These performance tests are neither statistically valid nor comprehensive; runtime performance is a not a primary goal of mal. If you draw any serious conclusions from these performance tests, then please contact me about some amazing oceanfront property in Kansas that I'm willing to sell you for cheap.

make "perf^IMPL"

# e.g.
make "perf^js"
make "perf"

Generating language statistics

make "stats^IMPL"

# e.g.
make "stats^js"

Dockerized testing

Every implementation directory contains a Dockerfile to create a docker image containing all the dependencies for that implementation. In addition, the top-level Makefile contains support for running the tests target (and perf, stats, repl, etc) within a docker container for that implementation by passing "DOCKERIZE=1" on the make command line. For example:

make DOCKERIZE=1 "test^js^step3"

Existing implementations already have docker images built and pushed to the docker registry. However, if you wish to build or rebuild a docker image locally, the toplevel Makefile provides a rule for building docker images:

make "docker-build^IMPL"

Notes:

License

Mal (make-a-lisp) is licensed under the MPL 2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0). See LICENSE.txt for more details.

mal (kanaka/mal)

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10.7K ·GitHub
这是什么?Mal(Make a Lisp)是一种受 Clojure 启发的 Lisp 解释器,是作为教学工具设计的:你可以分 11 个循序渐进的步骤,亲手实现同一个解释器。项目还提供了 89 种语言的 95 个以上参考实现,方便你对照比较。
这是一个解释器,还是一整套解释器?是一整套:同一种 mal 语言被用几十种编程语言分别独立重新实现,每个实现都遵循相同的 11 步结构。
我该如何真正运行其中某个实现?使用 Docker:每个实现都附带一个预构建的 Docker 镜像,其中已包含所需依赖。你只需通过 Makefile 目标启动 REPL,并把实现名称和步骤名作为参数传入。
我需要在自己的电脑上安装每种语言的工具链吗?不需要,只要使用提供的 Docker 镜像即可,因为每个实现的语言依赖都已预先构建在容器内。
列出的所有实现维护状态都一样吗?不一样。一些外部或备用实现已经落后,例如以前放在仓库中的旧版 Swift 2 实现,现在已经不容易构建或测试了。
这个项目适合谁?它面向想通过亲手实现来了解解释器工作原理的程序员。项目按 11 个循序渐进的步骤进行,每一步都演示一个 Lisp 核心概念。
最后一步 stepA 会发生什么?stepA 是自托管(self-hosting)发生的地方:到这一步时,实现已经足够完整,可以运行用 mal 语言自己编写的 mal 解释器。
有没有指南可以帮我编写自己的实现?有。项目链接了一份专门的 make-a-lisp 流程指南,以及一份常见问题解答(FAQ),解答构建新实现时常遇到的问题。另外还有一个 Discord 社区可以求助。
有没有基于 mal 构建的衍生项目?有,包括 malc(Mal 转 LLVM 的编译器)、malcc(以 Tiny C Compiler 为后端的增量编译器)、frock(Clojure 风格的 PHP)、flk(运行在 Bash 上的 Lisp),以及 glisp(一个自举的图形设计工具)。
我能比较不同语言实现之间的性能吗?README 提到了相关的基准测试工作,例如 mal2py-compiler。它是一个 Python3 分支,可以把 mal 编译为 Python,据报告在一个合成基准测试上提速 16 倍。这意味着生态中确实包含跨语言的性能比较。
Creator
kanaka
Size
12.9 MB
Stars
10.7K
Updated
CommitOct 22
Age
12y
Commits · 90 Days