Beavieeer Language

Table of Contents

• About
• Features
  • Core Language Features
  • Standard Library
  • Execution Modes
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• Usage
  • Script Mode
  • Interactive REPL
• Language Syntax
  • Variables
  • If Statements
  • If Expressions
  • List
  • Anonymous Functions
  • Hashes
  • Strings
• Future Features
• Benchmarking Performance
  • Benchmark Setup
  • Benchmark Results
  • Running the Benchmark Yourself
• Contributing
• License
• Contact

---

About

Beavieeer is a simple, C-like interpreted toy programming language written in Rust. This repository contains the implementation of the interpreter for Beavieeer. The language is designed to be easy to learn, with basic control structures, data types, and functional programming features. It supports both running scripts from .be files and an interactive REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop).

---

Features

Core Language Features:

• Control Structures: if statements for conditional logic.
• Data Types:
  • Primitive types: Integer, String, and Boolean.
  • Complex types: List and Hash.
• Anonymous Functions: Functions that can be defined without a name and passed around as values.
• Higher-order function: A function that takes one or more functions as arguments

Standard Library:

• I/O:
  • print - Prints a value to the console.
  • read - Read a value from the console.
  • readFile - Read the contents of a file.
  • writeFile - Writes to a file the given content String. Creates a file if it does not exist.
• List Operations:
  • len - Returns the length of a given list.
  • first - Returns the first element of a list.
  • last - Returns the last element of a list.
  • tail - Returns all elements of a list except the first.
  • get - Returns the element of a list specified by its index.
  • map - Applies a function to each element of a list and returns a new list.
  • filter - Filters a list based on a predicate function and returns a new (filtered)list.
  • reverse - Reverses a list.
• Functional Utilities:
  • fold - Reduces a list to a single value using a function.
• String Utilities:
  • lowercase - Returns the lowercase equivalent of the original String
  • uppercase - Returns the uppercase equivalent of the original String
  • trim - Returns a String with leading and trailing white space removed
  • parseNumber - Converts a String into a number
  • replaceString - Replaces all matches of a pattern with a String
  • replaceN - Replaces the first N matches of a pattern with a String
  • explode - Converts a string to a list. Each of the characters in the string is given an index that starts from 0
  • More to be added

Execution Modes:

• Script Mode: Run Beavieeer programs from a file with the .be extension.
• Interactive REPL: Experiment with Beavieeer code interactively. To exit, type :q.

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Rust: Ensure you have Rust installed. If not, install it using Rust's official guide.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Turtel216/Beavieeer.git
   cd Beavieeer

2. Build the project:

   cargo build --release

3. Run the interpreter:

   ./target/release/beavieeer

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Usage

Script Mode

To execute a Beavieeer script, create a file with the .be extension and run:

./beavieeer path/to/script.be

Example script:

let fibonacci = fun(x) {
  if (x == 0) {
    0;
  } else {
    if (x == 1) {
      1;
    } else {
      fibonacci(x - 1) + fibonacci(x - 2);
    }
  }
};

let result = fibonacci(10);
print(result);

Interactive REPL

Start the REPL:

./beavieeer

You can now write and execute Beavieeer code interactively. Exit the REPL by typing :q. Use :info to list built-in functions or :info <function> to get details about a specific one. You can also access all available commands and information by typing :help.

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Language Syntax

Variables

let x = 42;
let name = "Beavieeer";
let isAwesome = true;

If Statements

if (x > 10) {
    print("x is greater than 10");
} else {
    print("x is less than or equal to 10");
}

If Expressions

let x = 1;
let y = if (x == 2) { 2 } else { 1 };
print(y); // 1

List

let nums = [1, 2, 3, 4];
print(nums[1]); // 2
print(first(nums)); // 1
print(last(nums));  // 4
print(tail(nums));  // [2, 3, 4]

Beavieeer also supports adding lists

let lstOne = [1, 2, 3, 4];
let lstTwo = [5, 6, 7, 8];
let lstCombined = lstOne + lstTwo // [1, 2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6 ,7 ,8]

Anonymous Functions

let square = fun(n) { n * n };
print(map([1, 2, 3, 4], square)); // [1, 4, 9, 16]

Hashes

let person = {"name": "Alice", "age": 30};
print(person["name"]); // Alice

Strings

let hello = "Hello, ";
let world = "World!";
let contact = hello + world;
print(contact); // Hello, World!

let upper = uppercase(contact);
print(upper); // HELLO, WORLD!

let lower = lowercase(upper);
print(lower); // hello, world!

let replaced = replaceString(lower, "world", "beavieeer");
print(replaced); // hello, beavieeer!

let hey = "Hey Hey Hey";
let bye = replaceN(spam, "Hey", "Bye", 2);
print(bye); // Bye Bye Hey

---

Future Features

• import buildin for importing other Beavieeer files.
• ``Hash` utility functions
• http utility functions.
• REPL improvements.

---

Benchmarking Performance

We benchmarked our interpreter against Python using a Fibonacci sequence calculation to measure execution speed. The tests were conducted using hyperfine, a reliable benchmarking tool.

📌 Benchmark Setup

1. Comparison: Our interpreter vs. Python 3.
2. Tool Used: hyperfine (for accurate timing).
3. Command Used:

   hyperfine "python3 ./benchmarks/fibonacci.py" "./target/release/beavieeer ./benchmarks/fibonacci.be"

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Benchmark Results

Language	Execution Time (mean ± σ)	Speed Factor
Python 3	115.8 ms ± 0.7 ms	1x (Baseline)
Beavieer 1.2	3.020 s ± 0.096 s	~26.07x slower
Beavieer 1.3	2.841 s ± 0.086 s	~24.38x slower

---

Running the Benchmark Yourself

Install Hyperfine (if not installed)

# On Linux/macOS
sudo apt install hyperfine   # Debian/Ubuntu
brew install hyperfine       # macOS (Homebrew)

# On Windows (via Cargo)
cargo install hyperfine

Run the Benchmark

hyperfine "python3 ./benchmarks/fibonacci.py" "./target/release/beavieeer ./benchmarks/fibonacci.be"

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request if you have ideas for improvements.

Steps to Contribute

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature/fix:

   git checkout -b feature-name

3. Commit your changes and push to your fork.
4. Open a pull request to the main branch.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

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Contact

For any questions or suggestions, feel free to open an issue or cOntact the maintainer at papakonstantinou.dm@gmail.com.