The C• Programming Language

	Architecture	Master
macOS	x86_64
Ubuntu 18.04	x86_64
Ubuntu 16.04	x86_64

C• (pronouced see-dot) is a multi-paradigm systems programming language with the goal of combining the most popular features from a variety of modern languages. This includes (among many others)

• a modern syntax, inspired by Swift & Scala
• many of the convenience features provided by modern languages, such as closures, builtin sum types and easy interoperability with C-like languages
• automatic memory management via reference counting
• a (less restrictive) ownership model, inspired by Rust
• a powerful macro system, again inspired by Rust
• a variety of compile-time metaprogramming facilities
• a binary module format for distributing packages

C• binaries are compiled to machine code using LLVM, which means that the powerful optimization infrastructure of LLVM is automatically applied to every program you write.

For code examples and further documentation, please refer to the docs.

• Building cdotc
  • macOS
  • Linux
  • Building
• Using cdotc
  • Building a standalone executable
  • Building a module

Building cdotc

This repository contains the reference compiler for C•, also called cdotc. It is built using CMake.

macOS

Building cdotc on macOS requires CMake, LLVM, Python 3, and a C++17 compatible C++ compiler. All of these can be installed via Homebrew:

brew install cmake llvm python

Additionally, installation of the XCode developer tools is recommended:

xcode-select --install

Linux

Building cdotc on Linux requires CMake, LLVM, Python 3, and a C++17 compatible C++ compiler. All of these can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install cmake llvm g++ python

Building

After installing the dependencies, building cdotc should be as simple as cloning this repository and executing the build script:

cd utils
./build_script --test

The --test option is optional, but executing tests is recommended to ensure your build works correctly. If the build was successful, the cdotc binary should be included in your path and ready to use:

cdotc --version
cdotc version 0.0.1
Optimizing compiler for the CDot language

Additionally, the C• standard library should have been installed to your lib directory (if the test suite passed you should not have to verify this).

Using cdotc

Building a standalone executable

Building a C• program with cdotc is easy, simply create a file with the extension .dot and pass the path to it as an argument.

echo 'print("Hello, World!")' > main.dot
cdotc main.dot

cdotc will treat this file as the entry point to your program, which means that you do not have to explicitly define a main function. Specifying additional files is possible, but the first file will always be considered as the application entry point.

Since no output name was specified, the resulting executable will be called a.out and can be run like this:

./a.out
Hello, World!

Building a module

C• provides a builtin module format that can be used to create distributable packages. To build a module, you pass a so-called module file to cdotc instead of your sources. For a more detailed description of the module file format, refer to the documentation.

cdotc /path/to/my/module/mod.dotm -emit-modules

This will create a binary module file in your lib directory which can then be referenced from other C• files using an import statement.