Quixey

Quixey is a C-ish scripting language where I toy around with a few ideas that I have found interesting over the years. It inherits a many things from C, such as the scoping rules, most operators, and general curly brace syntax. However, unlike C, it has a native string type, ranged for, lambdas, an auto type, and much more.

I don't intend for this language to be taken particularly seriously, but it was fun to develop.

An interesting property of the implementation of the auto keyword is that since it is defined as assuming the type of the first assignment to it, is that it can have a different type in different scopes... But it can never change types in a given scope. For example:

auto foo(int x) {
	if(x) {
		return "Hello";
	} else {
		return 42;
	}
}

// since this function returns the auto type, we must capture the result
// in an auto type as well. 
auto n1 = foo(1); // n1 == "Hello" and is of type string
auto n2 = foo(0); // n2 == 42 and is of type int

// Now we can use is_integer and is_string to decide what to do with the 
// values as needed.

Aditionally, for similar reasons, the following is perfectly legal:

auto n;
if(func()) {
	n = "A String!";
} else {
	n = 123;
}

// at this point n is one of the two possible types depending on the result
// of func()

Of course for "poor mans templates", you can use auto for function parameters as well.

auto func(auto n) {
	// do something with n depending on the type!
}

However, you cannot change the type once it is set. So unlike weakly typed languages. The following is not allowed in quixey.

auto x = 1;
x = 'A'; // ERROR: cannot change type!

Supported Escape Sequences:

• \' : Single quote
• \" : Double quote
• \\ : Backslash
• \a : Audible bell
• \b : Backspace
• \f : Formfeed
• \n : Newline
• \r : Carriage return
• \t : Horizontal tab
• \v : Vertical tab
• \xnnn : Hexadecimal number (nnn)
• \nnn : number (nnn)

NOTE: in octal and hex decimal escape sequences, there is no limit on the number of digits but the least significant digits will be used (as happens in gcc). So for example '\x12345678' is functionally the same as '\x78'

Supported Operators:

• /= : divide left by right and assign to left
• / : divide left by right
• &= : binary AND left and right and assign to left
• && : logical AND left and right
• & : binary AND left and right
• |= : binary OR left and right and assign to left
• || : logical OR left and right
• | : binary OR left and right
• ^= : XOR left and right and assign to left
• ^ : XOR left and right
• ~ : compliment unary operand
• == : test if left equals right
• = : assign right to left
• != : test if left does not equal right
• ! : logical NOT of unary operand
• += : add left and right and assign to left
• + : add left and right
• -= : subtract right from left and assign to left
• - : subtract right from left
• *= : multiply left and right and assign to left
• * : multiply left and right
• %= : modulo divide left by right and assign to left
• % : modulo divide left by right
• >>= : right shift left by right and assign to left
• >> : right shift left by right
• >= : test if left is greater than or equal to right
• > : test if left is greater than right
• <<= : left shift left by right and assign to left
• << : left shift left by right
• <= : test if left is less than or equal to right
• < : test if left is less than right

Supported Types:

• char
• int
• string
• auto (assumes the type of the first thing assigned to it)

NOTE: modifiers such as unsigned are not supported

Supported Keywords:

NOTE: unlike C/C++ keywords like if, else, for, do, while require the curly braces, they are not optional

if, else:

if(x) { }
if(x) { } else { }
if(x) { } else if(y) { }
if(x) { } else if(y) { } else { }

for:

NOTE: you may declare a variable in the initialization part of the for loop, this variable only exists inside the loop. Just like in C++.

NOTE: the for each style syntax requires that you declare a variable as the initializer.

for(i = 0; i < 10; i += 1) { }
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i += 1) { }
for(auto e : a) {}

do:

do { } while(x);

while:

while(x) { }

return:

NOTE: Every function has a return type. If the end of a function is reached with no return, then an implicit return 0; is executed at function exit.

int, char, string. auto

int x = 5;
char y;
string s = "hello";
char ch = s[3];
auto a1 = "hello";
auto a2 = 5;
auto a3 = 'C';
auto a4 = a2;

Arrays

Arrays are heterogeneous, and are created via array literals so far:

auto x = ['a', 'b', 'c', 1234, "HELLO", [1, 2, 3, 4], function() { printf("W00t!\n"); }];

See test4.qc for some advanced usage of them such as type deduction.

Lambdas

lamdas are supported, and can only be assigned to a variable of type auto:

auto f = function() {
	puts("hello world");
};

f(); // prints "hello world"

lambdas also, always have the return type of auto.

Built-in Functions

• int size(auto x); // returns the length of an array or string
• int puts(string s); // just like C's puts
• int getch(); // gets 1 character from stdin
• int getnum(); // gets an integer from stdin
• int putchar(char ch); // puts a character to stdout
• int is_integer(auto x); // returns non-zero if the parameter is an integer
• int is_character(auto x); // returns non-zero if the parameter is a character
• int is_string(auto x); // returns non-zero if the parameter is a string
• int is_function(auto x); // returns non-zero if the parameter is an function or lambda
• int is_array(auto x); // returns non-zero if the parameter is an array
• int printf(string s, ...); // just like C's printf, an experiement in supporting variadic functions (may not stick around)