Introduction

This book is the main documentation for the Orn programming language.

Note

For bugs or missings in this book please report an issue in the Github repo

Warning

Orn is currently being designed and developed, so it can be that some of the syntax in this book it is not implemented yet, but it is intended to be.

What is Orn?

Orn is a systems-oriented language that aims for developers coming from high-level languages such as TypeScript but also low-level devs that are tired of the boilerplate and unreadable code.

Orn brings familiar syntax with low-level capabilities like manual memory management, pointers and strong static types while keeping a soft learning curve and a good developer experience.

Release

Orn is still being designed and implemented. This documentation works as a declaration of what it is intended to be for v1.0.

For a roadmap after v1.0, see the Roadmap section.

How does Orn look like?

struct Node {
	val: int;
	next: *Node;
}

enum Option {
	Some(int),
	None,
}

impl Node {
	fn create(val: int) -> Node {
		ret Node { val: val, next: null };
	}

	fn find(head: *Node, target: int) -> Option {
		while head {
			if head.val == target {
				ret ::Some(head.val);
			}
			head = head.next;
		}
		ret ::None;
	}
}

fn main() -> int {
	let a = Node::create(10);
	let b = Node::create(20);
	let c = Node::create(30);
	a.next = &b;
	b.next = &c;

	let result = Node::find(&a, 20);

	match (result) {
		Some(val) => { ret val; }
		None => { ret -1; }
	}
}

This example is consist of linked list implementation along with a function to find a value in the list.

Conventions throughout the book

thoughout the book, you’ll find many syntax explanations and code snippets. The syntax explanations are BNF-like rules following this notation:

	x y     : sequence
	x | y   : alternative
	x?      : optional
	x*      : zero or more
	x+      : one or more
	"x"     : literal token
	UPPER   : token from lexer
	(x y)   : grouping

e.g:

	if_stmt = IF expr stmt (ELIF expr stmt)* (ELSE stmt)?

This means that an if_stmt consists of an TK_IF followed by an expr and a stmt, followed by zero or more groups of TK_ELIF expr stmt, and optionally an else statement that would be the group TK_ELSE stmt.

Contributing

There are many ways to contribute to Orn, from reporting bugs and suggesting what you’d like to have implemented, to writing code and documentation. All contributions are welcome.

You can know more about how to contribute at Contributing to Orn