On this page you will find on display a number of mini languages which demonstrate various techniques in design and implementation of programming languages. The languages are implemented in Objective Caml.
I teach Theory of Programming Languages (page in Slovene) at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of University of Ljubljana. For the course I implemented languages which demonstrate basic concepts such as parsing, type checking, type inference, dynamic types, evaluation strategies, and compilation. My teaching assistant Iztok Kavkler contributed to the source code as well.
The languages are not meant to compete in speed or complexity with their bigger cousins from the real world. On the contrary, they are deliberately very simple, as each language introduces only one or two new basic ideas. You should find the source code useful if you want to learn how things are done.
Visit the PL Zoo discussion at my Mathematics and Computation blog to ask a question or leave a comment.
error value. Division by zero results
in error, which then acts as an exception. There is no
way to intercept error or to throw it directly.
See also Poly, which is an extension of MiniHaskell with polymorphic types and type inference.
Sub is an extension of MiniML.
An object-oriented language with eager evaluation, first-class functions, and dynamic types. It is based on a notion of objects as mutable and extensible records. There are no classes.
An interesting feature of the language is that, since "everything is an object", a value may behave simultaneously as an integer, boolean, function, and a record. This is reminiscent of intersection types.
README.txt and example.levy
file for details about syntax.