The Gobba Programming Language Basics

Comments

Comments are treated by gobba as whitespace and consequently ignored. Comments can be nested and are multi-line by default, and can be written as following:

(* This is a comment *)

Numbers, Arithmetics and the Numerical Tower

Gobba supports 3 kinds of numbers: integers, floats and complex numbers. Floating point numbers' decimal part can be omitted if it is 0. Floats also support the scientific notation in literal values. Complex numbers literals are "allocated" from other two numbers with the :+ operator. The number on the left will be the real part and the one on the right will be allocated as the imaginary part.

(* Integer literals *)
1 ;
0 ;
10350156 ;
(* Floating Point Literals *)
1.2e-3 ;
0.0 ;
0.123 ;
34. ;
4.3e9 ;
(* Complex Number Literals *)
12.1 :+ 1.23;
0 :+ 1.12;

Arithmetical operations are straightforward. If an arithmetical operation is called on different types of numbers, the result is "raised" to the "most inclusive" type of numbers. For example, Integer division returns an integer if the modulo is 0, and returns a float otherwise. Floating point numbers can use the power syntax using e.

(* Addition, multiplication and subtraction *)
1 + 2 + 3 * (4 - 1) ;
(* *)
1. / 2.315 ;

Boolean literals and arithmetic

The boolean literals in gobba are true and false. There are also operators for the logical AND and OR: && and ||. The comparison operators return boolean values and are:

a = b: True if and only if the two objects are the same
a > b and a >= b: Greater and greater or equal
a < b and a <= b: Less and less or equal

Here's an example:

true && false || (1 < 2) && (1 = 1) ;

Character literals.

The same as all the other languages: Single characters enclosed in ' are character literals, such as 'a' or '\n'. UTF-8 support is planned for a future release.

Strings

Strings are values enclosed in double quotation marks. Here is how to concatenate strings

"hello " ++ "world"
(* It is the same as *)
String:concat "hello " "world"

To convert any value to a string you can use the show primitive.

Lists

Lists are enclosed in square brackets and values are separated by commas. Lists are heterogeneous, so any value in a list can have a different type from the other elements of the list.

[1, 2, "ciao", 4, 5] ;

:: is the classic cons operator. It inserts the element on the left at the beginning of the list. This is done in O(1) time. The ++ operator is used for list and string concatenation.

1 :: [2] ++ [3]

To access the n-th value of a list, use the @ operator, called "at". List indexes begin from 0.

[1, 2, 3, 4] @ 0 (* => 1 *)
[1, 2, 3, 4] @ 2 (* => 3 *)

In gobba, the classic functional programming functions and morphisms on lists are defined in the List module:

Get the length of a list (done in O(n) time).

List:length [1, 2, 3, 4] ;

Get the element at the beginning of a list

List:head [1, 2, 3, 4] ;

Get another list with the first element removed

List:tail [1, 2, 3, 4] ;

Iterate a function over every list value and return a new list

List:map (fun x -> x + 1) [1, 2, 3, 4] ;

List folding: see the Wikipedia Page

List:foldl (fun x y -> x - y) 10 [1, 2, 3, 4] ;
List:foldr (fun x y -> x - y) 10 [1, 2, 3, 4] ;

Declarations

Local declaration statements are purely functional and straightforward:

let x = 4 and y = 1 in x + y

Global declaration statements create new, purely functional environments in both programs and the REPL. Omitting in is syntax-sugar, subsequent blocks will be evaluated in the resulting new environment.

let a = 2 ;
a + 3 ;

You can declare lazily evaluated variables by prefixing the name of the variables with the lazy keyword.

let x = 2 and lazy y = (3 + 4) ;

Toplevel Directives

Toplevel directives can be used in both files and the REPL. Like in OCaml, they start with a # symbol. Note that toplevel directives are not expressions and they can only be used in a file (or REPL) top level, and cannot be used inside expressions.

#include loads a file at a position relative to the current directory (if in the REPL) or the directory containing the current running file (in file mode). The declarations in the included file will be included in the current toplevel environment:

#include "examples/fibonacci.mini" ;

#module loads a file like #include but the declarations in the included file will be wrapped in a dictionary, that acts as a module:

#module "examples/fibonacci.mini" ;
(* Declarations will be available in module *) Fibonacci

#open takes a module name and imports everything that is contained in that module into the toplevel environment:

#open Math;

#verbosity n sets verbosity level to n. There are "unit" directives:
#dumpenv () and #dumppurityenv () dump the current environments.
#pure (), #impure () and #uncertain () set the globally allowed purity level.

Functions and recursion

For parsing simplicity, only the OCaml anonymous function style of declaring functions is supported. The keyword fun is interchangeable with lambda.

(fun x -> x + 1) 1;
let fib = fun n -> if n < 2 then n else (fib (n - 1)) + fib (n - 2)

Functions are abstracted into a single parameter chain of functions, and they can be partially applied:

(fun x y z -> x + y + z) = (fun x -> fun y -> fun z -> x + y + z) ;
(* result: true - bool - This is true!! *)

let f = (fun x y z -> x + y + z) in f 1 2 3 ;
(* result: 6 - int - Function application *)

let f = (fun x y z -> x + y + z) in f 1 2 ;
(* result: (fun z -> ... ) - fun - Partial application *)

Dictionaries and modules.

Dictionary (object) values are similar to Javascript objects. The difference from javascript is that the keys of an existing dictionary are treated as symbols, and values can be lazy.

You may have noticed that dictionary fields are syntactically similar to the assignments in let statements. This is because there is a strict approach towards simplicity in the parsing logic and language syntax. A difference from let statements, is that values in dictionaries can only access the lexical scope outside of the dictionary.

let n = {hola = 1, lazy mondo = 2, somefunc = fun x -> x + 1 } ;
let m = Dict:insert "newkey" 123 n ;
m = {newkey = 123, hola = 1, mondo = 2, somefunc = fun x -> x + 1 } (* => true *)
Dict:haskey "newkey" m (* => true *)
(* => {newkey = 124, hola = 2, mondo = 3} *)

An element of a dictionary can be accessed using the : infix operator.

m:hola (* returns 1 *)

Some morphisms are defined in the Dict module.

Dict:map (fun x -> x + 1) m;
Dict:foldl (fun x y -> x + y) 0 m;
Dict:foldr (fun x y -> x - y) 10 m;

Haskell-like dollar syntax

Too many parens?

f (g (h (i 1 2 3)))

Is equivalent to

f $ g $ h $ i 1 2 3

The Gobba Programming Language Handbook