# mal - Make a Lisp ## Description Mal is a Clojure inspired Lisp interpreter. Mal is implemented in 27 different languages: * Bash shell * C * C# * Clojure * CoffeeScript * Forth * Go * Haskell * Java * Javascript ([Online Demo](http://kanaka.github.io/mal)) * Lua * GNU Make * mal itself * MATLAB * [miniMAL](https://github.com/kanaka/miniMAL) * Nim * OCaml * Perl * PHP * Postscript * Python * R * Racket * Ruby * Rust * Scala * Visual Basic.NET Mal is a learning tool. See the [make-a-lisp process guide](process/guide.md). Each implementation of mal is separated into 11 incremental, self-contained (and testable) steps that demonstrate core concepts of Lisp. The last step is capable of self-hosting (running the mal implementation of mal). The mal (make a lisp) steps are: * [step0_repl](process/guide.md#step0) * [step1_read_print](process/guide.md#step1) * [step2_eval](process/guide.md#step2) * [step3_env](process/guide.md#step3) * [step4_if_fn_do](process/guide.md#step4) * [step5_tco](process/guide.md#step5) * [step6_file](process/guide.md#step6) * [step7_quote](process/guide.md#step7) * [step8_macros](process/guide.md#step8) * [step9_try](process/guide.md#step9) * [stepA_mal](process/guide.md#stepA) Mal was presented publicly for the first time in a lightning talk at Clojure West 2014 (unfortunately there is no video). See mal/clojurewest2014.mal for the presentation that was given at the conference (yes the presentation is a mal program). ## Building/running implementations ### Bash 4 ``` cd bash bash stepX_YYY.sh ``` ### C The C implementation of mal requires the following libraries (lib and header packages): glib, libffi6 and either the libedit or GNU readline library. ``` cd c make ./stepX_YYY ``` ### C# ### The C# implementation of mal has been tested on Linux using the Mono C# compiler (mcs) and the Mono runtime (version 2.10.8.1). Both are required to build and run the C# implementation. ``` cd cs make mono ./stepX_YYY.exe ``` ### Clojure ``` cd clojure lein with-profile +stepX trampoline run ``` ### CoffeeScript ``` sudo npm install -g coffee-script cd coffee coffee ./stepX_YYY ``` ### Forth ``` cd forth gforth stepX_YYY.fs ``` ### Go You Go implementation of mal requires that go is installed on on the path. The implementation has been tested with Go 1.3.1. ``` cd go make ./stepX_YYY ``` ### Haskell Install the Haskell compiler (ghc/ghci), the Haskell platform and either the editline package (BSD) or the readline package (GPL). On Ubuntu these packages are: ghc, haskell-platform, libghc-readline-dev/libghc-editline-dev ``` cd haskell make ./stepX_YYY ``` ### Java 1.7 The Java implementation of mal requires maven2 to build. ``` cd java mvn compile mvn -quiet exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=mal.stepX_YYY # OR mvn -quiet exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=mal.stepX_YYY -Dexec.args="CMDLINE_ARGS" ``` ### Javascript/Node ``` cd js npm update node stepX_YYY.js ``` ### Lua Running the Lua implementation of mal requires lua 5.1 or later, luarocks and the lua-rex-pcre library installed. ``` cd lua make # to build and link linenoise.so ./stepX_YYY.lua ``` ### Mal Running the mal implementation of mal involves running stepA of one of the other implementations and passing the mal step to run as a command line argument. ``` cd IMPL IMPL_STEPA_CMD ../mal/stepX_YYY.mal ``` ### GNU Make 3.81 ``` cd make make -f stepX_YYY.mk ``` ### Nim 0.10.3 Running the Nim implementation of mal requires Nim's current devel branch (0.10.3) or later, and the nre library installed. ``` cd nim make # OR nimble build ./stepX_YYY ``` ### OCaml 4.01.0 ``` cd ocaml make ./stepX_YYY ``` ### MATLAB The MATLAB implementation of mal has been tested with MATLAB version R2014a on Linux. Note that MATLAB is a commercial product. It should be fairly simple to support GNU Octave once it support classdef object syntax. ``` cd matlab ./stepX_YYY matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -nojvm -r "stepX_YYY();quit;" # OR with command line arguments matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -nojvm -r "stepX_YYY('arg1','arg2');quit;" ``` ### miniMAL [miniMAL](https://github.com/kanaka/miniMAL) is small Lisp interpreter implemented in less than 1024 bytes of JavaScript. To run the miniMAL implementation of mal you need to download/install the miniMAL interpreter (which requires Node.js). ``` cd miniMAL # Download miniMAL and dependencies npm install export PATH=`pwd`/node_modules/minimal-lisp/:$PATH # Now run mal implementation in miniMAL miniMAL ./stepX_YYY ``` ### Perl 5.8 For readline line editing support, install Term::ReadLine::Perl or Term::ReadLine::Gnu from CPAN. ``` cd perl perl stepX_YYY.pl ``` ### PHP 5.3 The PHP implementation of mal requires the php command line interface to run. ``` cd php php stepX_YYY.php ``` ### Postscript Level 2/3 The Postscript implementation of mal requires ghostscript to run. It has been tested with ghostscript 9.10. ``` cd ps gs -q -dNODISPLAY -I./ stepX_YYY.ps ``` ### Python (2 or 3) ``` cd python python stepX_YYY.py ``` ### R The R implementation of mal requires R (r-base-core) to run. ``` cd r make libs # to download and build rdyncall Rscript stepX_YYY.r ``` ### Racket (5.3) The Racket implementation of mal requires the Racket compiler/interpreter to run. ``` cd racket ./stepX_YYY.rb ``` ### Ruby (1.9+) ``` cd ruby ruby stepX_YYY.rb ``` ### Rust (1.0.0 nightly) The rust implementation of mal requires the rust compiler and build tool (cargo) to build. ``` cd rust cargo run --release --bin stepX_YYY ``` ### Scala ### Install scala and sbt (http://www.scala-sbt.org/0.13/tutorial/Installing-sbt-on-Linux.html): ``` cd scala sbt 'run-main stepX_YYY' # OR sbt compile scala -classpath target/scala*/classes stepX_YYY ``` ### Visual Basic.NET ### The VB.NET implementation of mal has been tested on Linux using the Mono VB compiler (vbnc) and the Mono runtime (version 2.10.8.1). Both are required to build and run the VB.NET implementation. ``` cd vb make mono ./stepX_YYY.exe ``` ## Running tests ### Functional tests The are nearly 500 generic functional tests (for all implementations) in the `tests/` directory. Each step has a corresponding test file containing tests specific to that step. The `runtest.py` test harness uses pexpect to launch a Mal step implementation and then feeds the tests one at a time to the implementation and compares the output/return value to the expected output/return value. To simplify the process of running tests, a top level Makefile is provided with convenient test targets. * To run all the tests across all implementations (be prepared to wait): ``` make test ``` * To run all tests against a single implementation: ``` make test^IMPL # e.g. make test^clojure make test^js ``` * To run tests for a single step against all implementations: ``` make test^stepX # e.g. make test^step2 make test^step7 ``` * To run tests for a specifc step against a single implementation: ``` make test^IMPL^stepX # e.g make test^ruby^step3 make test^ps^step4 ``` ### Self-hosted functional tests * To run the functional tests in self-hosted mode, you specify `mal` as the test implementation and use the `MAL_IMPL` make variable to change the underlying host language (default is JavaScript): ``` make MAL_IMPL=IMPL test^mal^step2 # e.g. make test^mal^step2 # js is default make MAL_IMPL=ruby test^mal^step2 make MAL_IMPL=python test^mal^step2 ``` ### Performance tests * To run performance tests against a single implementation: ``` make perf^IMPL # e.g. make perf^js ``` * To run performance tests against all implementations: ``` make perf ``` ### Generating language statistics * To report line and byte stastics for a single implementation: ``` make stats^IMPL # e.g. make stats^js ``` * To report line and bytes stastics for general Lisp code (env, core and stepA): ``` make stats-lisp^IMPL # e.g. make stats-lisp^js ``` ## License Mal (make-a-lisp) is licensed under the MPL 2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0). See LICENSE.txt for more details.