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Amber - the programming language compiled to Bash (amber-lang.com)

submitted 6 months ago by syd@lemy.lol to c/programming@programming.dev

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[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

No, I mean, analyzing the Amber expression to determine if Bash has a native construct that supports it is unnecessary if all arithmetic is implemented using bc. bc is strictly more powerful than the arithmetic implemented in native Bash, so just rendering all arithmetic as bc invocations is simpler than rendering some with bc and some without.

Note, too, that in order to support Macs, the generated Bash code needs to be compatible with Bash v3.

[–] thingsiplay 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I see, it's a universal solution. But the produced code is not optimal in this case. I believe the Amber code SHOULD analyze it and decide if a more direct and simple code generation for Bash is possible. That is what I would expect from a compilers work. Otherwise the generated code becomes write only, not read only.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 6 months ago

Compiled code is already effectively write-only. But I can imagine there being some efficiency gains in not always shelling out for arithmetic, so possibly that's a future improvement for the project.

That said, my reaction to this project overall is to wonder whether there are really very many situations in which it's more convenient to run a compiled Bash script than to run a compiled binary. I suppose the Bash has the advantage of being truly "compile once, run anywhere".