Readme.md

Shivver (WIP)

The Reflective Lambda Machine with Cold Storage

Shivver is a minimal Scheme-like language intended for reflective bootstrapping of higher level languages. Shivver is an evolution of the older Shimmer language.

The implementation is plain, portable C99 code.

This project is just getting started, so not much works yet.

Grammar

Var     → (like 'name')
Sym     → (like '%name')
Prm     → (like '#name')
Mac     → (like '@name')

Module  ::= module Var Decl*            '!shivver' Sym Decl*

Decl    ::= decl   Mac Term             '!def' Mac '=' Term

Term    ::= mvar   Var Nat              Var '^' Nat
         |  msym   Sym                  Sym
         |  mprm   Prm                  Prm
         |  mmac   Mac                  Mac

         |  mmmm n Term^n               '[' Term,* ']'

         |  mabs n Var^n Term           '{' Var* '}' Term
         |  mapp   Term Term            Term Term

         |  mlet n Var^n Term Term      '!let' '{' Var* '}' '=' Term '!in' Term
         |  mrec   Binds Term           '!rec' Binds '!in' Term

Binds   ::= bind1  bind                 Bind
         |  binds  Binds                Bind '!and' Binds

Bind   ::=  bind   Var '=' Term         Var '=' Term