Sapphire

A modern, fast and reliable programming language. (WIP)

WARNING: Most features in this README (especially the About section) are planned for the future and not yet implemented.

About

Sapphire is a relatively high-level programming language, yet low-level when it needs to be. The language supports low-level memory manipulation using pointers, but pointer arithmetic is only allowed in unsafe contexts, for greater memory safety. Dynamic memory allocation is also a thing, though it is recommended not to use it directly, but instead make great use of smart pointers.

Sapphire is a compiled programming language, with static typing, although type inference is also supported. It also has a high-level standard library, which supports console/file I/O, operating system functions, advanced math operations, string manipulation, and many more.

Basic usage

"Hello world" in Sapphire:

const io from @'core/io';

let @main in {
	io.outln('Hello, World!');
}

or alternatively:

const { outln } from @'core/io';

let @main in {
	outln('Hello, World!');
}

Examples

FizzBuzz:

const io from @'core/io';
const { toString } from @'core/type_utils';

let @fizzBuzz(i32 i) in {
	String result = '';
	if(i % 3 == 0)
	{
		if(i % 5 == 0)
		{
			result = 'FizzBuzz';
		} else {
			result = 'Fizz';
		}
	} else {
		if(i % 5 == 0)
		{
			result = 'Buzz';
		} else {
			result = toString(i);
		}
	}
	io.outln(result);
}

let @main in {
	for(i32 i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
	{
		fizzBuzz(i);
	}
}

Quine:

const io from @'core/io';
String fmt = 'const io from @%ccore/io%c;%cString fmt = %c%s%c;%clet @main in {%c%cio.outf(fmt,39,39,10,39,fmt,39,10,10,9,10,10);%c}%c';
let @main in {
	io.outf(fmt,39,39,10,39,fmt,39,10,10,9,10,10);
}

Documentation

More documentation is available at Documentation.

Building

First, install the required packages. (ninja is required only for the quick build, you can use other build systems (like GNU Make) for the manual build)

Debian/Ubuntu: # apt install zlib1g-dev build-essential cmake ninja-build llvm-dev

CentOS/Fedora/RHEL: # dnf install gcc gcc-c++ zlib-devel libffi-devel cmake ninja-build llvm-devel

Arch: # pacman -S gcc cmake ninja llvm-libs llvm

On platforms that install ninja to /usr/bin/ninja instead of /usr/bin/ninja-build, CMake may fail. In that case, symlink ninja-build to ninja (ln -s /usr/bin/ninja /usr/bin/ninja-build).

Then, you can either use the quick-build script or do a manual build.

Quick build: ./build.sh

Manual build first-time setup:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

Then, every time you want to build:

cd build
cmake --build .

Running

The compiler is built at build/sapphirec.

A few example commands:

$ build/sapphirec --version # prints the compiler version
$ build/sapphirec --help # shows usage
$ build/sapphirec main.sp # compiles a file
$ build/sapphirec main.sp -o main # compiles a file with output filename
$ build/sapphirec main.sp -o main --msystem darwin # compiles a file for macOS