Undâr Programming Language

A statically-typed permacomputing-oriented language for the purpose of creating 1st generation style 3D games and graphical user interfaces that work on constrained systems, microcontrollers, retro consoles, and the web using emscripten. It runs on the Reality Engine a 32 bit register-based VM written in C89.

Install

git clone https://git.alfrescocavern.com/zongor/undar-lang.git
cd undar-lang && make
./build/linux/undar-linux-debug ./test/hello.asm.lisp

Hello World

/**
 * High level C-like syntax (WIP)
 */
function main(int argc, str[] argv) {
  str name = "World";
  if (argc > 1) {
      name = argv[1];
  }
  print("Hello, {name}!");
  return 0;
}

((code 
  (label main  
    (load-immediate $1 &hello-str) ; load hello string ptr
    (call &pln ($1) nil)
    (halt)) ; done
  (label pln 
    (load-immediate $1 &terminal-namespace) ; get terminal device
    (load-immediate $11 0)
    (syscall OPEN $1 $1 $11)  
    (load-immediate $3 &new-line)
    (load-offset-32 $7 $1 4) ; load handle
    (string-length $2 $0)
    (syscall WRITE $7 $0 $2)
    (string-length $4 $3)
    (syscall WRITE $7 $3 $4)
    (return nil)))
(data 
  (label terminal-namespace "/dev/term/0")
  (label new-line "\n")
    (label hello-str "nuqneH 'u'?")))

Philosophy

• No dynamic memory - memory is static, frames use implicit arenas for dynamic allocation.
• First-class arrays - Fortran-style, row-major, fat pointers.
• Plexes - Symbolic data containers.
• Tunnels - 9p inspired unified I/O: files, sockets, devices, APIs.

Development Timeline

Inspired by

Uxn, Plan 9, Dusk OS, Dis VM Forth, Lisp, Fortran, C, Zig, Lua, Lox,