trith/trith

A concatenative programming language founded on the unholy trinity of Forth, Lisp and RDF triples.

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  "createdAt": "2009-08-23T19:18:49Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "A concatenative programming language founded on the unholy trinity of Forth, Lisp and RDF triples.",
  "fullName": "trith/trith",
  "homepage": "http://trith.org/",
  "language": "Ruby",
  "name": "trith",
  "pushedAt": "2011-01-02T00:26:34Z",
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  "topics": [],
  "updatedAt": "2024-12-30T19:16:18Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/trith/trith"
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Trith: Recombinant Programming

Trith is an experimental [concatenative][concat.org] programming language founded on the [unholy][lispers.org] trinity of [Forth][], [Lisp][] and [RDF][] triples.

Description

Trith is a stack-based, concatenative, dynamically-typed functional programming language with a homoiconic program representation.

[Stack-based][stack-oriented] means that instead of having named parameters, Trith functions operate on an implicit data structure called the operand stack. Trith functions can be thought of in terms of popping and pushing operands from/onto this stack, or equivalently in purely functional terms as unary functions that map from one stack to another.
[Concatenative][concatenative] means that the concatenation of any two Trith functions also denotes the [composition][] of those functions.
[Dynamically typed][type system] means that operands to Trith functions are type-checked dynamically at runtime.
[Homoiconic][homoiconic] means that in Trith there is no difference between code and data. You can manipulate and construct code at runtime as easily as you would manipulate any other data structure, enabling powerful metaprogramming facilities. Trith programs are simply nested lists of operators and operands, and can be represented externally either as [S-expressions][S-expression] or as [RDF][] triples.

Trith is inspired and influenced by experience with [Forth][], [Lisp][] and [Scheme][] in general, and the concatenative languages [Joy][], [XY][], [Factor][] and [Cat][] in particular.

Introduction

The Trith implementation currently consists of a virtual machine, interpreter, and compiler toolchain written in Ruby and an in-the-works runtime targeting the [JVM][].

You can use the Trith shell 3sh to explore Trith interactively:

$ 3sh
>> "Hello, world!" print
Hello, world!

For example, here’s how you would start with two prime numbers and end up with the correct answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything:

$ 3sh
>> 3 7 swap dup + *
=> [42] : []

In the above 3sh examples, >> indicates lines that you type, and => indicates the result from the shell. After each input line is evaluated, the shell will show you the current state of the Trith virtual machine’s data stack and code queue.

Thus in our previous example, the [42] on the left-hand side shows that the machine’s stack contains a single operand, the number 42. The [] on the right-hand side shows that the machine’s code queue is empty, which is generally the case after all input has been successfully evaluated.

Let’s run through the above example one more time using the --debug option to 3sh, which enables the tracing of each queue reduction step in the virtual machine:

$ 3sh --debug
>> 3 7 swap dup + *
..      [] : [3 7 swap dup + *]
..     [3] : [7 swap dup + *]
..   [3 7] : [swap dup + *]
..   [7 3] : [dup + *]
.. [7 3 3] : [+ *]
..   [7 6] : [*]
=>    [42] : []

As you can see, the virtual machine starts execution with an empty operand stack on the left-hand side and with all input placed onto the operator queue on the right-hand side. When input operands such as numbers are encountered on the queue, they are simply pushed onto the stack, which grows from left to right. When an operator such as the multiplication operator * is encountered on the queue, it is executed. Operators pop operands from the stack and then push their result(s) back onto the stack.

When fooling around in the Trith shell, two useful operators to know are clear, which clears the stack, and halt, which clears the queue (thus halting execution). You can also use reset which does both in one step, returning you to a guaranteed clean slate.

To get a listing of all operators supported in the current release, enter the ? metacommand in the Trith shell.

Linked Code

All Trith operators are identified by URIs, meaning that Trith code can be straightforwardly represented as [Linked Data][]. Here’s an example of the abs operator defined metacircularly using the Turtle serialization format for RDF data:

@base          <http://trith.org/core/> .
@prefix trith: <http://trith.org/lang/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

<abs> a trith:Function ;
  rdfs:label     "abs" ;
  rdfs:comment   "Returns the absolute value of a number."@en ;
  trith:arity    1 ;
  trith:code     (<dup> 0 <lt> (<neg>) (<nop>) <branch>) .

This function description comprises a total of 21 triples. The entire Trith core library currently weighs in at about a kilotriple (1,000 triples), with all but a handful of primitive (irreducible) operators having a metacircular definition. See etc/trith-core.ttl for the RDF definitions of Trith core operators.

Reference

Sequences

Trith has a rich set of sequence operators that will be instantly familiar to programmers coming from functional programming languages such as Scheme, Clojure or Haskell:

>> 10 iota
=> [[0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]] : []
>> dup seq? .
true
>> dup empty? .
false
>> dup length .
10
>> [dup mul] map
=> [[0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81]] : []
>> dup first .
0
>> dup fifth .
16
>> dup 7 nth .
49
>> dup last .
81
>> dup 0 [+] foldl .
285
>> rest
=> [[1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81]] : []
>> dup 1 [*] foldl .
131681894400
>> reverse
=> [[81 64 49 36 25 16 9 4 1]] : []

Strings

Strings are simply sequences of characters (Unicode code points), meaning that you can make use of any of the normal sequence operators on strings as well:

>> : hello "Hello," " world!" concat ;
>> hello seq? .
true
>> hello text? .
true
>> hello empty? .
false
>> hello length .
13
>> hello first .
H
>> hello rest .
ello, world!
>> hello reverse .
!dlrow ,olleH

Scripting

The canonical “Hello, world!” script is found in doc/examples/hello.3th:

#!/usr/bin/env 3vm
"Hello, world!" print

Any command-line arguments passed to 3VM scripts form the initial stack of the virtual machine. The arguments are placed on the stack in their original unparsed string form.

You can print out the contents of the initial stack like so:

#!/usr/bin/env 3vm
stack print

Here’s an example of how you would interpret all given command-line arguments as numbers and then sum them up and print out the result:

#!/usr/bin/env 3vm
stack [num] map 0 [+] foldl print

Embedding

Embedding Trith in Ruby

require 'trith'

# Let's start with the obligatory  "Hello, world!" example:

Trith::Machine.run do
  push "Hello, world!"
  print
end

# There are several equivalent ways to execute Trith code:

Trith::Machine.run { push(6, 7).mul }            #=> 42
Trith::Machine.run [6, 7] { mul }                #=> 42
Trith::Machine.run [6, 7, :mul]                  #=> 42

# Operators in Ruby blocks can be chained together:

Trith::Machine.run { push(2).dup.dup.mul.pow }   #=> 16

# If you require more control, instantiate a machine manually:

vm = Trith::Machine.new
vm.define!(:square) { dup.mul }
vm.push(10).square.peek                          #=> 100

# You can also define operators when constructing a machine:

vm = Trith::Machine.new(data = [], code = [], {
  :hello => proc { push("Hello, world!").print },
})

# Should you want to use any Trith functions from Ruby, it's easy enough
# to encapsulate a virtual machine inside a Ruby method:

def square(n)
  Trith::Machine.run [n] { dup.mul }
end

square(10)                                       #=> 100

Embedding Trith in JVM-based languages

The [JVM][] runtime for Trith is a work in progress. See src/java for the runtime’s source code and current status.

Dependencies

Ruby (>= 1.9.1) or (>= 1.8.1 with Backports)
RDF.rb (>= 0.3.0)
SXP (>= 0.0.12)
Promise (>= 0.3.0)
FFI (>= 1.0.0)

Installation

The recommended installation method is via RubyGems. To install the latest official release of the trith gem, do one of the following:

$ [sudo] gem install trith                  # Ruby 1.8.x/1.9.x
$ [sudo] gem1.9 install trith               # Ruby 1.9 with MacPorts
$ [sudo] jruby --1.9 -S gem install trith   # JRuby 1.5+

Once Trith is installed, you will have four new programs available:

3sh, aka “trish”, is the Trith interactive shell and interpreter.
3vm, aka “trivium”, is the Trith virtual machine runtime.
3cc, aka “tricksy”, is the Trith compiler.
3th, aka “trith”, is the Trith package manager.

Note that as of the current release, only the first two do anything much as yet.

Environment

The following are the default settings for environment variables that let you customize how Trith works:

$ export TRITH_HOME=~/.trith
$ export TRITH_CACHE=$TRITH_HOME/cache
$ export TRITH_TERM=$TERM

Download

To get a local working copy of the development repository, do:

$ git clone git://github.com/trith/trith.git

Alternatively, you can download the latest development version as a tarball as follows:

$ wget http://github.com/trith/trith/tarball/master

Mailing List

http://groups.google.com/group/trith

Authors

[Arto Bendiken]!(mailto:arto.bendiken@gmail.com) - http://ar.to/

License

Trith is free and unencumbered public domain software. For more information, see http://unlicense.org/ or the accompanying UNLICENSE file.