marin

An experimental functional+imperative programming language, inspired by OCaml, which features the more advanced concept of typeclasses (or just classes).

The main features of Marin are :

• A type system based on Hindley-Milner, extended with type-class, and various useful constructs such as union, record.
• Full type inference which attempts to type let-bindings with the most general type-scheme, taking into account type-class constraints.
• A functional+imperative feel, as seen in OCaml, or Rust.
• Clean and readable syntax, strongly inspired by Lua's.
• Runs on a tiny virtual machine with its own bytecode.

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Table of contents

• About
• Installation
  • Requirements
• Usage
• Quick overview
• Standard library

About

This project is originally meant to be an implementation for a personal school-related project (theorical computer science, compilers, their implementation). However, I'm also working on it to play around with my own ideas, especially to explore the design of a programming language.

Resources which I rely on for this project:

• Types and Programming Languages, Benjamin C. Pierce
• Crafting Interpreters, Robert Nystrom

Installation

Requirements

• Rust +1.86.0 (2024 edition)
• Cargo

Clone the repository and build the application :

git clone https://github.com/catapillie/marin
cd marin
cargo build --release

The executable should be located in ./target/release/.

Important

The app builds with an std folder meant for internal use by the compiler.

Usage

Note

Currently the compiler is still it its initial WIP state and does not have many CLI options.

Check and compile a program to bytecode, then immediately execute it with:

marin <files...> [options...]

Available options:

• --no-std: prevents Marin's standard library from being automatically imported in your project.
• --show-disassembly: prints all of the bytecode upon execution.

Marin source files are meant to end with the .mar extension. Multiple files can be used, and can depend on each other with the import statement. Dependency cycles are forbidden.

Quick overview

Find some examples in docs/overview.md.

Standard library

The current standard library for Marin is automatically imported in every file (except if --no-std is on), and contains various definitions such as data types, mathematical functions and operations, and typeclasses. You can find its documentation in docs/std.md.