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Saffire introduction

Joshua Thijssen
October 07, 2012
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Saffire introduction

Joshua Thijssen

October 07, 2012
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Transcript

  1. Saffire Goals • Be a (not the) programming language. •

    Suitable for web (fastCGI) and command line. • Cool, workable, enjoyable language.
  2. History • Decided on learning more about flex / bison.

    • “Why not write a language instead of a calculator?” • 2 hours later: 2 developers, a github account and domains registered. • Saffire, dutch/english mix of “saphire” (as in: perl / ruby / ...).
  3. History • Primarily based on PHP / Python syntax with

    some ideas from other languages (java, ruby, javascript). • We’re 10-15 years behind, but 10-15 years of traps and pitfalls we can avoid.
  4. Technical info • Open source (3-clause BSD license). • Written

    in C. • Imperative language. • Dynamically and strong typed. • Byte code generation. • Interpreter for now. • JIT (and/or compilation) later.
  5. Selling points • Everything is an object. • Even “foo”,

    2, /reg?ex*/ and 3.14159265. • UTF-8 out of the box. • No functions, just objects and methods. • Method and operator overloading.
  6. Variables and such use io; $a = 1; $b =

    “foo”.length(); // 3 $c = “björk”.length(); // 5! $d = “björk”.bytes().length(); // 6! $e = 1; io.print(“$e equals “,$e);
  7. Classes use io; class Foo { const PI = 3.1415;

    protected property $a = 1; public method ctor() { io.printf(“Constructor called!\n”); } public method dtor() { io.printf(“Destructor called!\n”); } public method Bar() { self.$a++; } } $f = Foo(); io.printf(“PI is %0.3f“, Foo.PI); io.print(“First call: “, $f.bar()); io.print(“Second call: “, $f.bar()); $f.destroy(); // $f is no more
  8. Modules use io; use FooFramework as Foo; use BarFramework; $foo

    = Foo::Framework(); $content = $foo->run(); $req = BarFramework::HTTP::Request(); $req.status = 200; $req.content = $content; $req.out();
  9. Operator Overloading use io; class Foo { protected property $a;

    public method ctor(String $a) { self.$a = $a; } public method ::+(String $b) { return self.$a.concat(“ “, $b); } } $f = Foo(“hello”); $f += “world”; io.printf($f, “\n”);
  10. Method Overloading class Foo { public method foo(String $a) {

    // Do something with a string } public method foo(Numerical $a) { // Do something with a numerical } public method foo($a) { // Any object (not string or numerical) } }
  11. Saffire for PHP • FastCGI and CLI only • “compiled”

    bytecode (*.sfc files) • UTF-8 - strlen(), strpos() etc. • Objects, objects everywhere • Method and operator overloading • There are no arrays (hashmaps & lists) • Multi assignments: $a, $b = 1, 2; • Empty assignments: $a, ,$b = 1, 2, 3;
  12. Saffire for PHP • By default returns “self” ($this) (fluent

    interface) • foreach/else while/else breakelse • try / catch / finally • “ducktyping” and interfacing are supported • Out of the box annotation-reader
  13. Current Status • Initial scanning / parsing done (flex/bison). Might

    change to lemon. • Language specification on its way. • Still figuring out problems. • Abstract Syntax Trees (AST) can be generated. • Initial object module engine created (heavily based on Python’s) • Initial bytecode generator
  14. What’s next A)Get “something” running fast, but poor. B) Do

    things properly but takes (much) more time. C)All of the above...
  15. What’s next • Finish the language specification. • Implementation specification

    • Bytecode optimization phase (?) • Create the interpreter. • Create a more stable lex / parse system (pureparser / lemon) • ??? • Profit
  16. (Un)Stable release? • Depends on the help! • 0.01 not

    until somewhere (late) 2013. • Roadmap hasn’t been created. • First (dutch) meetup: 26 october 2012
  17. We need YOU... • C programmers, but many, many others

    for websites, documentation, language specification, testing/QA, app writers, framework writers, evangelists, etc, etc.. • USERBASE! • If you can read this, you can help us!
  18. Find us! • IRC: freenode.org #saffire • mailinglist: https://groups.google.com/group/ saffire-internals

    • website: http://saffire-lang.org • github: https://github.com/saffire/saffire • twitter: @saffire-lang