Perk

Perk is a modern low level programming language, compiled to C. It builds on C's simplicity, adding features such as option types, lambdas and typeclasses. Its current goal is to replace C in the implementation of the MellOS operating system.

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Run Perk with nix

nix run github:Alex23087/Perk -- [files]

This will build the perkc compiler and run it directly (you can pass any arguments after --).

Documentation

We are using ocamldoc to generate the documentation. Use the command make docs to generate the documentation.

Integration with C

Import C libraries using import "libname.h". The compiler will automatically add most of the prototypes from the C source to the typechecker. This is not yet perfect, and does not yet work for custom include paths (check out this issue), nor does it currently include macros.

Features

• Simple type inference

fun main () : int {
    // No need to write the type here!
    let x := 3;
    return 0;
} 

• Tuples

let position: (float * float) = (200.,200.)

• Option types, with implicit boxing at assignment

    let z : (int*)? = nothing;
    z = just &x;

• Typeclass system (Archetypes and Models)

archetype Drawable {
    position : (float * float),
    rotation : float,
    texture : SDL_Texture*,
    size : (float * float),
    draw : SDL -> void
}

model Character: Drawable, PhysicsObject {
    let position: (float * float) = (200.,200.),
    let velocity: (float * float) = (0., 0.),
    ...

    fun constructor (sdl : SDL) : void {
        ...
    },

    fun draw (sdl : SDL) : void {
        ...
    }
}

• Parametric generic functions through archetype sums

let f := (x: <Drawable+PhysicsObject>) : void {...}

f(drawable_physics_thing as Drawable+PhysicsObject)

• Capturing anonymous functions

fun streq (s1 : char*) : char* => int {
    return (s2 : char*) : int {return (strcmp (s1, s2) == 0)}
}

• Static subset (only uses the stack, only allows non-capturing lambdas)