CesilC

CESIL, or Computer Education in Schools Instruction Language, is a programming language designed to introduce pupils in British secondary schools to elementary computer programming. It is a simple language containing a total of fourteen instructions.

Ladies and gentlemen, CESIL time. That's right, I did it again! And this time it works (maybe).

47 years later, introducing a brand new, fast, epic cesil compiler.

Installation

There is currently no binary build for macos. That is because linux -> mac cross-compilation fails with some long and chaotic error message and It would be super complicated to fix and I don't want to have to read the Xcode license and I'm sure it would make me give all my copyright rights to Apple [...]

There are installation scripts in the releases.

Syntax

I was not able to find any official specifictions, so I had to go mainly by the wikipedia article. When it was first created, cesil was punched onto punch cards. This means that the syntax written in a text file on a computer must be modified a little. Here is what I did:

• You are not forced to use columns
• If a line starts with (, it is a comment
• Empty lines and comments are ingored
• If a line starts with an identifier, then the first word is considered a label, word 2 is condidered the command and word 3 (if it exists) is considered the argument
• If the line starts with a whitespace, the first word is considered the command and the second one the argument

This means that the following program:

        LOAD    +0
LOOP    STORE   TOTAL
        UIN
        JINEG   DONE
        ADD     TOTAL
        JUMP    LOOP

DONE    PRINT   "The total is: "
        LOAD    TOTAL
        OUT
        LINE
        HALT

is just as valid as

 LOAD +0
LOOP STORE TOTAL
 UIN
 JINEG DONE
 ADD TOTAL
 JUMP LOOP

DONE PRINT "The total is: "
 LOAD TOTAL
 OUT
 LINE
 HALT

Data section starts with % and ends with *

Compilation targets

The compiler will detect the target you want from the output file extension.

Current

• C (.c)
• native binaries (No extension [linux]/.app [MacOS]/.exe [Shitdows])
• Bash (.sh)
• JavaScript (.js)
• PHP

Planned

• Java
• APKs (using java)
• Batch files (MS-DOS compatible)

Compilation to JS

1. Currently only works in browser
2. You include the build script in the browser using <script src="your-script.js"> and then use window.CESIL_RUN(...)
3. If you give the CESIL_RUN function a function as an argument (eg window.CESIL_RUN(x => console.log(">" + x))), that function will be used for logging. If you give it a query selector (eg window.CESIL_RUN('#output')), it will put output into the selected element.
4. You can define window.CESIL_LINE_END to set a custom line break string.
5. Feel free to use the code from test.html

Compilation to PHP

The line delimeter (\n for terminal, < br > for browser) is determined by if interactive mode is on. If you want to compile for terminal without interactive mode, change the line 8 of your compilation result to say

$LINE = "\n";

Dm me on discord if you want to request a compilation target!

API coverage

• This implementation covers 100% of cesil api.
• A new instruction is added: UIN, this reads a number from stdin and saves it to the accumulator. This is for interactivness of your binaries and won't compile unless you use the interactive flag.

CLI usage

Run cesilc --help to get cli usage information.

Preprocessor

CesilC has its own preprocessor! It currently only has one command: #include filename

Careful!

Do not enclose the file name in "

( Correct
#include source.ces

( Wrong
#include "source.ces"

Roadmap

• Catch some errors at compilation time
• Error handeling so the compiler doesnt ever crash
• More compilation targets
• ...

VsCode cesil highlighting?

Here

Additional questions

If you have any questions or want to contact me for any reason, add me on discord: danik#4985

Development

You can make your own compilation targets, just have a look at the source. You can use make_release.sh to generate binaries for all platforms.

License

This program uses the GPLv3 license. See its full text in the COPYING file!

Cesil compiler/transpiler
Copyright (C) 2022 danik4985

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Notes

• Compilation to mac and shitdows binaries isn't tested. In case it doesnt work, compile to c source and use your compiler to compile that. (And report it to issues).
• To compile to binaries, you need to have gcc installed.
• If you encounter any problems, please report them in the issues tab.
• If you enjoy this project, I would be very happy if you starred it (so that more people see it.) ⭐