proposal.md

Proposal for Ferropt

Like in Rust, Ferropt shall also allow Structs, Functions, Variables, but in a different sense.

A Program can be:

• Function-like: each Program Entity is a function, always return a value with a type defined in runtime, after execution; might contain directly passed parameters
• Script-like: no data to be returned, but possibly states like successful/failed (like Ok/Err); "parameters" are always supplied by environments or (global/helper) functions

Basics

There is no definite visibility in a Program: anything in a Program can be access anywhere in a Program.

All defined Declarations must use a symbol prefix before their names, preventing conflicts with keywords

Most types shall be the same as defined in Rust, but there are no macros and modules.

Immutable variable declaration: let $name = expr

Mutable variable declaration: let* $name = expr

Function declaration: fn #name(...) -> type {...}

Struct declaration: struct #name, struct #name(...) (tuple), struct #name {...}

Struct field declaration: $name: type

Trait declaration: trait #name : type {...}

There is also lifetime management in Ferropt.

References: ::name is equilavent to #name, #::path for absolute path

Naming conventions are likely the same as in Rust.

Libraries

By the runtime itself, there are no built-in standard functions or utilities, but likely only primitives and operators without supplementary functions.

The project itself may provide some standard utilities as separate crates that are fundamental in programming.

Binary

Interpreted Binaries with Bytecodes from Sources are formatted and defined as below.

Header consists of

• magic number (12 bytes): 0x89 FERROPT 0x00 BTS
• format version:
  • major version (2 bytes): u16
  • minor version (2 bytes): u16
• list of version specific headers:
  • length (2 bytes): u16
• vendor string (UTF-8; maximally 255 characters)
• list of vendor specific headers:
  • length (2 bytes): u16 Content consists of
• import table
• bytecodes