Pallas

A modern systems language you actually want to use.

Don't sacrifice beauty for control.

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Overview • Community • Quick Start • Language Reference • Examples • Roadmap

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Overview

Pallas is a systems programming language that combines low-level control with a safer, modern language design. This is a personal project inspired by my friend Lily's programming language, ADAN and many ideas inspired by languages like C/C++, Go, Rust and Zig.

What Pallas gives you:

• Explicit behavior
• Manual memory management
• Structs and classes
• Pattern matching
• Familiar syntax

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Community

Pallas is a personal project - Though I'd appreciate any contributions and feedback.

• Personal Discord: @kauht or @yuhbayn

• Discord: Server

• GitHub: kauht/Pallas

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Index

General	Language Reference
Overview Community Quick Start Examples Roadmap Contributing License	Types Variables & Functions Structs & Classes Control Flow Pattern Matching Pointers & Memory Type Casting

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• CMake
• A C++17 compatible compiler
• LLVM v14+

Build

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

Run

build/palc --help

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Language Reference

Types

Pallas uses explicitly-sized types. No implicit numeric conversions.

Type	Description
i8, i16, i32, i64, i128	Signed
u8, u16, u32, u64, i128	Unsigned
f32, f64	Floating point
bool	Boolean
char	Character
string	String
void	No Type

Type aliases:

Alias	Equals
int	i64
uint	u64
float	f32
double	f64

Pointers and Arrays:

• T* - pointer to T
• T** - pointer to pointer
• T[n] - array of n size

Variables and Functions

x: i32 = 42;
const PI: f32 = 3.14159;

square(n: i32): i32 {
    return n * n;
}

Structs and Classes

Structs only support data. Classes support methods, constructors, and destructors.

struct Vector3 {
    x: f32;
    y: f32;
    z: f32;
}

class Person {
    public:
        name: string;
        age: i32;

        Person(n: string, a: i32) {
            name = n;
            age = a;
        }

        ~Person() {
            // destructor
        }

        greet(): void {
            println("Hello, ${name}, you are ${age} years old!");
        }

    private:
        ssn: string;
}

Control Flow

if (x > 10) {
    println("large");
} else {
    println("small");
}

for (i: i32 = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    println("${i}");
}

counter: i32 = 0;
while (counter < n) {
    counter++;
}

Pattern Matching

match (x) {
    0 => { println("zero"); }
    1 => { println("one"); }
    42 => { println("rahh"); }
    _ => { println("something else"); }
}

Pointers and Memory

Manual memory management with new and delete.

x: i32 = 5;
p: i32* = &x;
*p = 10;

arr: i32* = new i32[10];
arr[0] = 1;
delete arr;

Type Casting

No implicit conversions, besides when using literals.

x: i32 = 5; // OK
y: f32 = 5; // OK
z: f32 = (f32)x; // OK

a: f32 = x; // ERROR

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Examples

Function

add(a: i32, b: i32): i32 {
    return a + b;
}

Using a Class

main(): void {
    p: Person* = new Person("Sammy", 17);
    p.greet();
    delete p;
}

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Roadmap

Goals:

• Finish language spec
• Complete Scanner(pretty much done)
• Complete Parser
• Complete Semantic
• Integrate LLVM
• Complete IR
• Complete Codegen
• Add tests for parser, semantics, and codegen
• Write LSP and formatter (VSCode/Zed/Neovim)

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Contributing

Contributions are always welcome, check out CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

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License

Pallas uses MIT licensed - see LICENSE.

Influences

Pallas is heavily inspired by the following projects

• C, C++, Rust, Zig, Go
• Lily
• ADAN
• Zen C

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More Documentation

• Design doc and notes: DESIGN.md
• TO-DO: TODO.md
• Examples: examples/