moon-lang

Moon

Moon is an minimal, JIT-compilable, portable and secure code-interchange format. It is:

• Safe: Moon isolates logic from side-effects, allowing you to securely run code from untrusted sources.

• Fast: when compiled to JS, it beats popular libs by a large margin.

• Compact: Moon has a canonical binary format for very small bundles.

• Decentralized: Moon imports are hash-addressed, recursively resolved from IPFS.

• Small: this entire implementation, for example, is a 7.5K JS file (gzipped).

Formally, Moon is just untyped λ-calculus extended with numbers, strings and maps.

Usage / Examples

Running code

To evaluate some code, simply use Moon.run():

const Moon = require("moon-lang")();
 
const program = `
  maximum = array =>
    (for 0 (get array "length") 0 index => result =>
      value = (get array (stn index))
      (if (gtn value result)
        value
        result))
  (maximum [1 7 6 9 5 2 8])
`;
 
console.log(Moon.run(program));

This is safe to do no matter the code contents, because Moon runs fully sandboxed.

Compiling Moon to a native function

You can also JIT-compile it to fast native functions:

const Moon = require("moon-lang")();
 
const factorial = Moon.parse(`n =>
  (for 1 (add n 1) 1 i => result =>
    (mul i result))
`);
 
console.log(factorial(4));

Decompiling a native function to Moon

And the other way around:

const Moon = require("moon-lang")();
 
const pair = Moon.parse("a => b => [a b]");
 
console.log(Moon.stringify(pair(1)));

Loading code from IPFS

Moon can recursivelly import hash-addressed terms from IPFS:

const Moon = require("moon-lang")(); 
 
(async () => {
 
  const sum = Moon.parse(await Moon.imports(`n =>
    // Imports array library from IPFS
    List = zb2rha9PW5Wnvhvz1n7pxXFZoMzeD3NxKYdZUHgxEsbhW8B4D
    reduce = (List "foldr")
    range = (List "range")
 
    (reduce (add) 0 (range 0 n))
  `));
 
  console.log(sum(5000000));
 
})();

Saving code to IPFS

It can also easily publish those terms:

const Moon = require("moon-lang")();
 
(async () => {
 
  const cid = await Moon.save("x => (mul x 2)");
  console.log(cid);
 
  const double = Moon.parse(await Moon.imports(cid));
  console.log(double(7));
  
})();

Performing side-effects (IO)

Moon itself is pure, but it can perform side-effective computations by injecting the effects from the host language. To avoid the "callback-hell", you can use Moon's monadic notation:

do = zb2rhkLJtRQwHz9e5GjiQkBtjL2SzZZByogr1uNZFyzJGA9dX
 
askPowerLevel = loop@ lazy =>
  | power =< (do "prompt" "What is your power level? ")
    (if (gtn (stn power) 9000)
      | (do "print" "No, it is not.")>
        (loop 0)
      | (do "print" "Ah, that's cute!")>
        (do "stop"))
 
(askPowerLevel 0)

You can run the code above using moon-tool:

moon runio zb2rhjR4sMEiMQ9m9bNCnavSUjEDzUvSrtAhuJStRWHcvNzb8

Optimizing code

1. Use # to fully inline an expression.

2. Use {fast:true} option (faster, only tradeoff is it can't be decompiled).

3. Don't use recursive algorithms (map, reduce, etc.) directly on arrays; convert to churh-lists to enable fusion.

(async () => {
 
// Notice the hash (#): it fully inlines an expression, making it 8x faster.
const dotCode = `# x0 => y0 => z0 => x1 => y1 => z1 =>
  Array = zb2rhYmsjmQuJivUtDRARcobLbApVQZE1CwqhfnbBxmYuGpXx
  a = [x0 y0 z0]
  b = [x1 y1 z1]
  (Array "sum" (Array "zipWith" (mul) a b))
`;
 
// Also, use {fast:true}
const dot = Moon.parse(await Moon.imports(dotCode), {fast:true});
 
// Call it a ton of times
var dots = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < 1000000; ++i) {
  dots += dot(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6);
}
console.log(dots);
 
// Check the difference on the output
console.log(Moon.compile(await Moon.imports(dotCode)));
 
})();

Exporting Moon libs to npm

See this repository.

CLI

Check out moon-tool.

TODO

• Time limit option