Perk

Perk is a modern low level programming language, compiled to C. It builds on C's simplicity, adding features such as option types, lambdas and typeclasses. Its current goal is to replace C in the implementation of the MellOS operating system.

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Run Perk with nix

bash
1nix run github:Alex23087/Perk -- [files]

This will build the perkc compiler and run it directly (you can pass any arguments after --).

Documentation

We are using ocamldoc to generate the documentation. Use the command make docs to generate the documentation.

Integration with C

Import C libraries using import "libname.h". The compiler will automatically add most of the prototypes from the C source to the typechecker. This is not yet perfect, and does not yet work for custom include paths (check out this issue), nor does it currently include macros.

Features

• Simple type inference

1fun main () : int {
2    // No need to write the type here!
3    let x := 3;
4    return 0;
5} 

• Tuples

1let position: (float * float) = (200.,200.)

• Option types, with implicit boxing at assignment

1    let z : (int*)? = nothing;
2    z = just &x;

• Typeclass system (Archetypes and Models)

1archetype Drawable {
2    position : (float * float),
3    rotation : float,
4    texture : SDL_Texture*,
5    size : (float * float),
6    draw : SDL -> void
7}

1model Character: Drawable, PhysicsObject {
2    let position: (float * float) = (200.,200.),
3    let velocity: (float * float) = (0., 0.),
4    ...
5
6    fun constructor (sdl : SDL) : void {
7        ...
8    },
9
10    fun draw (sdl : SDL) : void {
11        ...
12    }
13}

• Parametric generic functions through archetype sums

1let f := (x: <Drawable+PhysicsObject>) : void {...}
2
3f(drawable_physics_thing as Drawable+PhysicsObject)

• Capturing anonymous functions

1fun streq (s1 : char*) : char* => int {
2    return (s2 : char*) : int {return (strcmp (s1, s2) == 0)}
3}

• Static subset (only uses the stack, only allows non-capturing lambdas)