The ABS programming language

ABS is a programming language that works best when you're scripting on your terminal. It tries to combine the elegance of languages such as Python, or Ruby, to the convenience of Bash.

tz = `cat /etc/timezone`
continent, city = tz.split("/")

echo("Best city in the world?")

selection = stdin()

if selection == city {
  echo("You might be biased...")
}

See it in action:

Let's try to fetch our IP address and print the sum of its parts, if its higher than 100. Here's how you could do it in Bash:

# Simple program that fetches your IP and sums it up
RES=$(curl -s 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json' || "ERR")

if [ "$RES" = "ERR" ]; then
    echo "An error occurred"
    exit 1
fi

IP=$(echo $RES | jq -r ".ip")
IFS=. read first second third fourth <<EOF
${IP##*-}
EOF

total=$((first + second + third + fourth))
if [ $total -gt 100 ]; then
    echo "The sum of [$IP] is a large number, $total."
fi

And here's how you could write the same code in ABS:

# Simple program that fetches your IP and sums it up
res = `curl -s 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json'`

if !res.ok {
  echo("An error occurred: %s", res)
  exit(1)
}

ip = res.json().ip
total = ip.split(".").map(int).sum()
if total > 100 {
    echo("The sum of [$ip] is a large number, $total.")
}

Wondering how you can run this code? Simply grab the latest release and run:

$ abs script.abs

Installation

The easiest way is to:

bash <(curl https://www.abs-lang.org/installer.sh)

then you can:

$ abs path/to/scripts.abs

Documentation

Visit abs-lang.org or check the examples directory, which contains a few brief scripts.

Contributing

Wanna hack on ABS locally? The recommended development environment is inside a Docker container -- simply:

• make build (builds the container)
• make run (sends you inside the development container)
• make test (runs the abs tests)

After you make any change, simply run make test and check if any errors pops up. If everything looks fine that means you're ready to open a pull request!

Status

ABS is fresh and under active development, meaning exciting things happen on a weekly basis.

Have a look at the roadmaps here: to know of what version we're currently working on take a look at abs-lang.org/misc/technical-details.