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authorbryan newbold <bnewbold@leaflabs.com>2014-03-12 16:17:01 -0400
committerbryan newbold <bnewbold@leaflabs.com>2014-03-12 16:17:01 -0400
commitcffecb57f88acb02354b68a9ffe22abbabd5931d (patch)
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parent251e18cf769866c24b6c4719f950d589b5eac8b9 (diff)
downloadspectrum-cffecb57f88acb02354b68a9ffe22abbabd5931d.tar.gz
spectrum-cffecb57f88acb02354b68a9ffe22abbabd5931d.zip
basic docs
-rw-r--r--README9
-rw-r--r--howto.txt51
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+ _
+ ___ _ __ ___ ___| |_ _ __ _ _ _ __ ___
+ / __| '_ \ / _ \/ __| __| '__| | | | '_ ` _ \
+ \__ \ |_) | __/ (__| |_| | | |_| | | | | | |
+ |___/ .__/ \___|\___|\__|_| \__,_|_| |_| |_|
+ |_|
+
+ a set of lambdas
+
diff --git a/howto.txt b/howto.txt
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+
+### How to implement a simple scheme?
+
+Potentially need an AST-like data structure representing the parsed expression.
+This is the s-expression. Well represented as a pair with value types:
+
+ null
+ pair
+ boolean (true/false)
+ number
+ identifier/symbol
+
+One way to accomplish the above would be to use a pair datatype in the host
+language. Another is to try to use tuples or lists; this will result in faster
+execution but is much harder?
+
+'value' and other high level functions will take an s-expr and return an
+s-expr. eval wraps this with an AST parse at the begining and a pretty print at
+the end.
+
+'meaning' takes an s-expr object and a context/environment and computes the
+result s-expr. it recursively looks at each node in the s-expr, decides what
+action needs to be taken on it, and executes the action. possible actions (aka,
+parsed types) are:
+
+ const (atomic values)
+ lambda
+ quote (s-expr "one level down")
+ identifier (a symbol to be looked up in the context)
+ cond (conditional expression)
+
+The specific list of "special"/"built-in"/"reserved" identifiers is:
+
+ lambda
+ quote
+ cond
+ else
+ cons
+ car
+ cdr
+ null?
+ eq?
+ atom?
+ zero?
+ number?
+
+Things which an be applied are lambdas and the above built-ins.
+
+When applying a lambda, need to bind values to local context. This requires
+an immutable or copied lookup table.
+