Home

Welcome to the Cmple wiki!

The Idea

A language that is as easy to use as python but the speed of C. This language will be called Cmple (pronounced 'simple') whose syntax is a mix between C (in terms of variable declaration) and python (everything else). A translator to C, called cmple2c, would translate the Cmple code to C and then, compiled using C compiler.

Functionality is borrowed from various programming languages (Nim, Julia, Python, C) to allow better abstraction and ease of use.

Why Another Language?

Nim is the nearest to my liking but I still find it too complicated. Nim is like Pascal and my preference is C in terms of simplicity.

Attempts are made to make coding and typing easier. For example, to comment a code, typing '//' or ''' is so much easier compared to typing /* */. Also, python-like expressiveness is attempted and cymple2c will do the hard work of translating them to equivalent C code.

Delimiters

Blocks are grouped by indentation, python-style. The following Cymple statement

if 2 < x < 111
     z = 5
     y = 0
else
     z = -22
     y = 22

will be translated to this equivalent C statement

if (2 < x && x < 111) {
    z = 5;
    y = 0;
}
else {
    z = -22;
    y = 22;

Notice that unlike python, no need for ':' at the if line. }

Comments

Use '//' to designate comments as follows:

// this is a comment  
x = 4 // another comment  

cmple2c will translate this to:

 /* This is a comment */   
 x = 4; /* another comment*/    

Use ''' for longer comments as follows:
'''
This is a longer comment
spanning several lines
'''
cmple2c will translate this to:
/*
This is a longer comment
spanning several lines
*/

Variable and Function Declaration

Functions are always declared in C-syle:
int f(int x, float y)

Variables need not be declared if it could be derived somewhere else.
x = f(5, 3.4) // no need to declare x

Since we know that f() returns an int, the cmple2c would automatically create the declaration for you
int x; // <- automatically created by the translator
x = f(5, 3.4);