jik-lang/jik
Compiler for the Jik programming language. Contribute to jik-lang/jik development by creating an account on GitHub.
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README
Jik A readable language with region-based memory management that compiles to C.
Try Jik in GitHub Codespaces Open a ready-to-use Jik development environment.
What is Jik? Jik is a statically typed programming language designed to be readable and easy to learn. It uses a straightforward source-to-C compilation model, region-based memory management and avoids garbage collection. Jik provides practical language features such as type inference, optional type annotations, vectors, dictionaries, options, variants, and more, together with a small standard library. The result is a language that keeps common code concise and expressive, while still compiling to readable and predictable C. Jik's memory model is one of its defining ideas. Instead of garbage collection or manual heap allocation, composite values are allocated into explicit regions that determine their lifetime, with language rules that prevent invalid cross-region use. Examples These examples provide a quick tour of common Jik features.
Parsing a config use "jik/string"
func main(): text := "host = localhost\nport = 8080\nmode = dev\n" settings: Dict[String]
for line in string::split(text, "\n", _): if line == "": continue end parts := string::split(line, "=", _) if len(parts) == 2: key := string::trim(parts[0], _) value := string::trim(parts[1], _) settings[key] = value end end
host := settings["host"] port := settings["port"] if host is Some and port is Some: println("connecting to ", host?, ":", must string::to_int(port?)) end end
Error handling throws func safe_div(x, y): if y == 0.0: fail("division by zero") end return x / y end
func show_div(x, y): try value := safe_div(x, y): println(x, " / ", y, " = ", value) except: println("cannot divide ", x, " by ", y, ": ", error_msg()) end end
func main(): show_div(12.0, 3.0) show_div(7.0, 0.0) println("forced result: ", must safe_div(8.0, 2.0)) end
Working with variants variant Packet: ID: int TEXT: String BYTES: Vec[int] end
func inspect(pkt): if pkt is Packet.ID: pkt[Packet.ID] = pkt[Packet.ID] + 1 println("next id: ", pkt[Packet.ID]) end
match pkt: case Packet.ID{id}: println("id packet: ", id) case Packet.TEXT{text}: println("text packet: ", text) case Packet.BYTES{bytes}: println("bytes packet, len = ", len(bytes), ", first = ", bytes[0]) end end
func main(): pkt := Packet.ID{41} println("raw id: ", pkt[Packet.ID]) inspect(pkt)
inspect(Packet.TEXT{"hello"}) inspect(Packet.BYTES{[10, 20, 30]}) end
Newton method use "jik/math"
struct NewtonResult: root: double converged: bool xs: Vec[double] end
func solve(x0: double, tol: double, max_steps: int, r: Region) -> NewtonResult: xs := [0 of 0.0][r] x := x0 push(xs, x)
for step = 0, max_steps: fx := math::cos(x) - x if math::abs(fx) <= tol: return NewtonResult{root = x, converged = true, xs = xs}[r] end x = x - fx / (-math::sin(x) - 1.0) push(xs, x) end
return NewtonResult{root = x, converged = false, xs = xs}[r] end
func main(): res := solve(1.0, 1e-12, 20, _) println("root: ", res.root) println("steps: ", len(res.xs) - 1) println("converged: ", res.converged) end
For more examples, look in the examples directory or inside the Jik test suite. Showcase
Play Missile Defence — a Jik game using the Raylib 6.0 wrapper.
Source code Note: the browser demo is a separate WebAssembly build
Quick start To start programming in Jik:
download the latest release for your platform extract the release archive from the extracted directory, run jik help to confirm the executable works (optional) add the extracted directory to PATH if you plan to use jik run or jik build, either pass the compiler name with --cc or set JIK_CC, for example to clang or gcc
Windows: For a simple GCC setup, download from WinLibs, and add its bin directory to PATH
create a file hello.jik:
func main(): println("Hello, Jik!") end
run it: jik run hello.jik generate C output: jik tran hello.jik build an executable: jik build hello.jik
Only clang and gcc host compilers were tested. MSVC was not tested.
Building Jik from source To build Jik from source, you will need make and a C compiler:
download the Jik repository and navigate to the root run make
Additionally, to run the Jik test suite:
run make test
Note that MSVC was not tested and is not the default build path in this repository Further reading
Documentation Language overview Region-based memory management CLI reference Standard library documentation Jik packages Official Jik website
Repository layout
src/ - compiler source jiklib/ - Jik standard library modules support/ - Jik support library test/ - test suite docs/ - design notes and language documentation examples/ - examples of Jik code assets/ - assets (logo, etc) scripts/ - dev scripts tools/ - tools (syntax highlighting, etc)
Roadmap
0.1.x - Implementation stabilisation
keep the language syntax stable (intended to be frozen) find and fix bugs in the compiler and in the support library (core.h) extend the standard library as needed expand the test suite write real programs in Jik to validate the implementation
Later
bootstrapping: rewrite Jik in Jik concurrency support (may be implemented either in the C implementation or during bootstrapping)