Galactic Compiler

Internals

• Main Entry File Universe
• Lexer
• Parser
• High Level
• Typed
• Code Generation

Quick Start

This project requires Java 21 (preview) or higher to run.

Open the project as a Gradle project and run the Main class with --enable-preview as vm flag.

The Main class compiles the File in /resources/standalone/HelloWorld.stella and builds it to /resources/build.jar. See the Config file, to configure the build process.

This jar can be executed with java -jar build.jar and will print Hello World! to the console.

Folders can also be opened. The Module Systems works like in java, so you can import classes from other files and packages.

Note

Anonymous function are not on main yet, generics are not implemented and there is no way of calling the super methods yet.

Examples:

For more examples see the tests folder, or view the standard libraries in the library folder.

Hello World

Main.stella

import @java String java.lang.String

fn main(args: [String]) = {
    ~"Hello World!"

    print("args: ")
    #for var i = 0, i < args.length, i = i + 1 {
        print(args.get(i) & " ")
    }
    println()
}

Output:

Hello World!
args: ...

How this works:

Extensions

The ~"Hello World!" is syntactic sugar for ("Hello World!").bitComplement(). The bitComplement function is an extension method defined in the Core library, which is automatically imported:

fn bitComplement() -> void extends Object = {
    println(this)
}

Extensions are also the reason you can call println() on every object, or test for null with isNull().

Macros

The #for loop is a macro, which is expanded to a while loop at compile time. The Macros can use their own grammar, building on the existing Language, to parse Expressions and convert them back into tokens. As a User you cant define your own macros yet, but the standard library uses them to provide a more convenient syntax.