Weel - A fast and extensible programming language for Java

Copyright (C) 2011 René Jeschke rene_jeschke@yahoo.de
See LICENSE.txt for licensing information.

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Weel is a dynamically typed, case insensitive, imperative and slightly functional and object oriented programming language running on the Java(TM) virtual machine.

It's main goal is to provide a simple and powerful scripting language for Java with mechanisms for easy interaction with Java code and without having to bind to any native libraries.

Weel's syntax is heavily based on Lua, though Weel is not Lua. There are minor and major differences between Lua and Weel, but if you know Lua, it won't be hard to get started with Weel. The syntax also contains elements from C, C++, Java and functional programming languages.

As usual the term 'fast' is relative. Weel is of course much slower than doing the same things in pure Java, but it beats most other existing dynamically typed languages running on the JVM.

Development state

still-beta

Features

• Can easily be extended with Java functions (using annotations)
• Easy mechanisms for mapping Java classes to Weel 'classes'
• Multithreading support
• Fully written in Java, no external dependencies
• Unit test framework

For more informations have a look here.

TODO

• Var-args
• Call anonymous functions without assigning them (e.g. @{println "Doh!"}(); )
• Finish standard library (Map/IO functions)
• Add a security mechanism to control which libraries/functions get loaded
• Add mechanism for user library registering and loading on demand
• Map some more useful Java classes to Weel
• Library documentation
• Maybe create a 'weel-library' project on github to give users a chance to extend Weel in a moderated way?

Build instructions

As usual a

ant release

creates the jars in the 'release' folder.

Usage

1. Usage from a terminal

   You can invoke Weel from a terminal using the following line:

   java -cp <path-to-weel-jar-or-build-classes> com.github.rjeschke.weel.Run <args>
   
   <args>:  <script> [<script> ...] [--debug] [--dump] [-- args]
   

   Run searches for a sub/func called main, with 0 or 1 arguments, which gets called (if exists) after all static code was run. The arguments (all after --) will be supplied as a list.

   • --debug enables asserts (which would otherwise be stripped away)
   • --dump dumps the generated intermediate code in human readable form to stdout

2. Usage from Java

   Weel weel = new Weel();
   
   // Compile also takes InputStreams and compileResource accepts a 'resource name',
   // e.g. if you have a script inside you code in 'my.scripts' called 'Scripts.weel'
   // you can simply use: weel.compileResource("my.scripts.Scripts");
   weel.compile("println('Hello world!')");
   
   weel.runStatic(); 
   

Examples

Type bound and anonymous functions

// Semicolons aren't needed, but allowed
ms = {};

// Generic list fold function
func ms:fold(fc)
    // Asserts get stripped when not compiled in debug mode
    assert(isMap(this),
        "Value is not a map");
    
    if size(this) == 0 then
        return null;
    elseif size(this) == 1 then
        return this[0];
    else
        ret = fc(this[0], this[1]);
        for i = 2, size(this) - 1 do
            ret = fc(ret, this[i]);
        end
        return ret;
    end
end 

// Generic populate function
func ms:populate(sz, fc)
    assert(sz > 0,
        "Size is zero or less");
    assert(isMap(this),
        "Value is not a map");
    assert(funcCheck(fc, 1, true) || funcCheck(fc, 2, true), 
        "Illegal populator function signature");
     
    if funcArgs(fc) == 2 then
        for i = 0, sz - 1 do
            this[] = fc(this, i);
        end
    else
        for i = 0, sz - 1 do
            this[] = fc(i);
        end
    end
    return this;
end

// Generic filter function    
func ms:filter(fc)
    assert(funcCheck(fc, 1, true),
        "Illegal filter function.");
    assert(isMap(this),
        "Value is not a map");
    
    ret = {};
    foreach v in this do
        if fc(v) then
            ret[] = v;
        end
    end
    return ret;
end

funcReg("map", ms);

println(
    {}
        ::populate(9, @{(i) return i + 1})
        ::filter(
            @{ (v) 
                return (v % 3) && (v % 5) ? false : true;
             })
        ::fold(
            @{ (a, b) 
                return a + b;
             })
       );

Wrapping 'java.lang.StringBuilder'

Java code

import com.github.rjeschke.weel.*;
import com.github.rjeschke.weel.annotations.*;

@WeelClass(name = "java.lang.StringBuilder", usesOop = true)
public class MyStringBuilder
{
    @WeelMethod
    public final static void ctor(final ValueMap thiz)
    {
        WeelOop.setInstance(thiz, new StringBuilder());
    }
    
    @WeelMethod
    public final static void append(final ValueMap thiz, final Value value)
    {
        final StringBuilder sb = WeelOop.getInstance(thiz, StringBuilder.class);
        sb.append(value.toString());
    }

    @WeelMethod
    public final static void clear(final ValueMap thiz)
    {
        final StringBuilder sb = WeelOop.getInstance(thiz, StringBuilder.class);
        sb.setLength(0);
    }

    @WeelMethod(name = "toString")
    public final static String sbToString(final ValueMap thiz)
    {
        final StringBuilder sb = WeelOop.getInstance(thiz, StringBuilder.class);
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

Import the functions into Weel

Weel weel = new Weel();

// ...

weel.importFunctions(MyStringBuilder.class);

// ...

Usage from Weel

sb = new(java.lang.StringBuilder);

sb->append("Hello");
sb->append(" world!");

println(sb->toString());

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Project link: https://github.com/rjeschke/weel