README.md

bel-clojure: super-alpha

This is my hack to run PG’s Bel in Clojure. Want to try it out?

First, Make sure you have Clojure installed. After that:

clj -X:repl

Tests

clj -X:test

Some Examples

This is PG's examples, recreated on this interpreter. You can note what's implemented, and the slight differences.

>
(cons 'a 'b '(c d e))
>  (a b c d e)
(cons \h "ello")
>  (h e l l o)
(2 '(a b c))
> b
(set w '(a (b c) d (e f)))
>  nil
(find pair w)
>  (b c)
(pop (find pair w))
>  b
w
>  (a (c) d (e f))
(dedup:sort < "abracadabra")
>  (a b c d r)
(map (upon 2 3) (list + - * /))
>  (5 -1 6 2/3)
(let x 'a
    (cons x 'b))
>  (a . b)
(with (x 1 y 2)
    (+ x y))
>  3
(let ((x y) . z) '((a b) c)
    (list x y z))
>  (a b (c))
((fn (x) (cons x 'b)) 'a)
>  (a . b)
((fn (x|symbol) (cons x 'b)) 'a)
>  (a . b)
((fn (x|int) (cons x 'b)) 'a)
>  (err (quote mistype))
((fn (f x|f) (cons x 'b)) sym 'a)
>  (a . b)
((macro (v) `(set ,v 7)) x)
>  nil
x
>  7
(apply or '(t nil))
>  t
(best (of > len) '((a b) (a b c d) (a) (a b c)))
>  (a b c d)
(do (thread (do (join 'a 'b)))
    (thread (do (join 'a 'b) (join 'b 'd))))
>  (b . d)
(do (thread (do (join 'a 'b)))
    (thread
      (atomic (do (join 'a 'b) (join 'b 'd)))))
>  (a . b)

Notes

To make the interpreter tolerably fast, I tweaked the source in a few ways

1. I represent the environment as a map, rather than a list
2. I leaked java’s numbers, strings, and characters into Bel
3. I moved some logic out of the source and into the interpreter

This isn't done yet. There's a few big todos remaining

1. Streams. I didn’t implement streams yet. I think the best plan would be to leak Java streams, and I wanted to think about it.
2. Performance tuning. I made some tweaks, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still.

This has been a lot of fun to write. I hope it’s as fun for you to play with it.