LispJS

LispJS is a small Lisp-like language that compiles to JavaScript. It is still a work in progress but feel free to take a look at it :).

Installation

You can install LispJS with npm

[sudo] npm install lispjs -g

To compile a file

lispjs source.lispjs -o output.js

The language

The main idea of the language is to have a JavaScript with Lisp syntax. Let's start with a simple example

(alert "Hello World")

As in any lisp the function execution in LispJS is (func param1 param2 ...)

Now there are some specific functions to be used with LispJS such as the def function to define values.

(def a 3)

From that point on the 'a' identifier has the value '3' assigned. One important thing to know is the basic arithmetic functions

(def a (+ 2 2))
(def b (- 4 3))
(def c (* 2 3))
(def d (/ 4 2))

This is equivalent to the JavaScript

var a = 2 + 2;
var b = 4 - 3;
var c = 2 * 3;
var d = 4 / 2;

One of the most important things to do with any lisp is working with lists. This is the way to define lists in LispJS

(def xs (list 1 2 3 4))

You can also use the 'car' and 'cdr' functions of lisp

(car xs) ; returns 1
(cdr xs) ; returns (2 3 4)

LispJS also includes some of the traditional lisp operators like map, foldLeft, foldRight and filter. More are to be added in the future.

To define JavaScript objects from LispJS you have to use a list, this way:

(def person (object (list
   "name" "Eduardo Sorribas"
   "country" "Dominican Republic")))

As you can see, the language is far from ready and there are many things yet to define. There is an example of LispJS using jQuery in the examples folder. If you have any questions feel free to write to me or create an issue.

Disclaimer

This language was made as a university assignment and was later somewhat fixed. It is obviously missing a lot of stuff: there are not enough tests, the semantic analyzer is incomplete and the language lacks a lot of features. I uploaded on the chance that someone might be interested and would want to check and maybe improve it a bit.

I do not intend this language to be used for professional purposes. I intend to improve the compiler whenever I have time. If you want to help you can try to write some simple programs and report any issue you had. Or if you want you can try to fix the issue and send a pull request.

License

MIT License. Read LICENSE.txt for more information.