akavi / yowo

A little programming language experiment exploring explicit control of variable scope.

You Only Write Once

A little programming language experiment exploring explicit control of variable scope.

Hmm?

When you create a variable in YOWO, you choose its scope resolution rules by prepending it with a sigil:

• '_' or nothing: The variable is resolved lexically (The standard scoping rule in most languages)
• '$': The variable is resolved dynamically (ie, up the call stack)
• '#': The variable is resolved up the module hierarchy
• ':': The variable is resolved up the inheritance hierarchy

Also, variable scopes are first-class objects. Ie, you can access the current scope of each type directly (with the bare sigil) and manipulate it at will.

Why?

Not sure yet. Seems like it might produce some cool things.

What's with the name?

YOWO's probably gonna end up a write once, read never kind of language.

Are you seriously writing an interpreter in Ruby?

For the performance!