The Phix Programming Language

"I don't want to die in a language I can't understand."
- Jorge Luis Borges

Latest version: 0.8.3
Release date: 2^nd February 2021

Price: Free. No nags and No expiry date.
Source code: Incuded.
Self Hosted: No other tools required to modify/rebuild Phix.

-- Phix has just five builtin data types 
--
--      <======== object =========>
--      |                |
--      +-atom           +-sequence
--        |                |
--        +-integer        +-string
--

-- Phix is simple
puts(1, "Hello, World!") 
-- and can be interpreted or compiled: 
$ p hello
Hello, World! 
$ p -c hello
Hello, World!

-- Phix is multi-platform 
C:\Phix> p hello
Hello, World! 
~/phix$ .\p hello
Hello, World! 
?iff(platform()=WINDOWS?"Windows":"Linux")

-- user-defined types made simple 
type pair(object p)
    return sequence(p) and length(p)=2 
end type 
pair p1 = {2,3} -- ok 
pair p2 = {2,4,6} -- fails 
p1 &= 0 -- fails

-- line comments
/*
   multiline comments
    /* nestable */
*/

-- naturally polymorphic
?sort({1, 1.5, "oranges", -9, 1e300, 100, "apples"})
Output:
{-9,1,1.5,100,1e+300,"apples","oranges"}

-- one difference worth learning
sequence s1 = {1,2,3}, s2 = {4,5,6}
?s1&s2
?append(s1,s2)
Output:
{1,2,3,4,5,6}
{1,2,3,{4,5,6}}

-- negative subscripts are permitted
sequence s = tagset(6)      ?s
s[-2..-1] = {-2,-1}         ?s
--s[5..6] = {-2,-1} -- equivalent
Output:
{1,2,3,4,5,6}
{1,2,3,4,-2,-1}

-- fully mutable strings
string this = "feed"
string that = this  -- both=="feed"
that[2..3] = "oo"   -- that:="food"
this[1] = 'n'       -- this:="need"
?{this,that}
Output:
{"need","food"}

-- variable length slice substitution
string s = "food"       ?s
s[2..3] = "e"           ?s
s[2..1] = "east"        ?s
Output:
"food"
"fed"
"feasted"

-- Phix comes with batteries included...
include builtins\timedate.e 
set_timedate_formats({"h:m:s"})
timedate start = parse_date_string("10:37:15"),
         ended = parse_date_string("12:38:14")
?elapsed(timedate_diff(start,ended))
Output:
"2 hours and 59s"

-- associative arrays aka dictionaries
setd("one",1)
setd(2,"duo")
?getd("one")
?getd(2)
Output:
1
"duo"

-- exception handling
try
    integer i = 1/0
catch e
    ?e[E_USER]
end try
puts(1,"still running...\n")
Output:
"attempt to divide by 0"
still running...

-- regular expressions
include builtins\regex.e
?gsub(`\ba\b`,"I am a string","another")
Output:
"I am another string"

Phix is Pete’s Self Hosted Hybrid Interpreter/Compiler Why pshhic was not the best of acronyms, plus phiX is the name of the first ever manmade lifeform artifically created from scratch in a laboratory, which seems rather appropriate for a self-hosted compiler

Aims:

Create an easy to use programming language which is also easy to modify and maintain.
Bug location must be made as easy as possible. If as some studies suggest up to 90% of effort is actually spent fixing bugs, it follows that the toolchain should be strongly focused on the expediency with which bugs can be located and fixed - at least those in otherwise well written code; obviously anything difficult to understand in the first place will more than likely prove at least as tricky the second time round, should it go wrong.
In Phix, all errors, both compile-time and run-time, are human-readable and indicate the precise file and line where they happened, and Edita jumps right there.

Allow the programmer to focus on solving the problem, rather than solving the solution.
Terse may at first seem nice, but properly readable and easy to understand code is better.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Leonardo da Vinci (as commonly attributed, eg , but see )

“A language that doesn’t have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.”
- Dennis M. Ritchie

“Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set?”
- Edsger W. Dijkstra

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”
- Brian W. Kernighan

“The readability of programs is immeasurably more important than their writeability.”
- C. A. R. Hoare

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.”
- E. F. Schumacher