inosms / valid

a programming language that always produces valid syntax

Introduction

Valid is a programm language, that always results in valid syntax no matter what you type (non operators are just evaluated to nothing) - though semantically it may be complete bullshit. Furthermore it is not said that any given valid program will terminate (for example j0 will not).

Its input is a list of bitstrings and it outputs a single bitstring.

The primary usage is to provide a simple language with valid syntax for gene expression programming.

Operators

+ is plus pab = a + b

i is if: if { evaluates to 1 at beginning } then { evaluate } else { evaluate } iabc = if a then b else c

t is tail: ta = tail a (empty results in empty)

a is append: abc = b ++ c

p is append positive pa = 1:a

n is append negative pa = 0:a

r is reverse: reverses the order of bits in the list

e is empty: if {evaluates to empty} then {evaluate} else {evaluate} eabc = if a is empty then b else c

j is jump: ja.. = jump to (evaluate a an interpret as number) with parameters (evaluate rest of gene as long as needed for parameters for destination jump gene)

c is create empty: c = []

0-9 is a parameter, up to now not more parameters are supported

Usage and Examples

Basics

Valid is parsed from left to right. To evaluate an operator the needed parameters must be evaluated. Parameters always come directly after the operator:

t0 would apply t to 0

tp0 would apply tto p, but p is no value, and thus must also be evaluated, so p0is evaluated first and returned to t

Nothingness is empty

If the program ends but more parameters are needed, all needed parameters will evaluate to empty ([])

t would apply t to nothing, and nothing always evaluates to []

Jumping

The input is always a set of programs, with each program being mapped to an index. e.g. executing

nc
pc

nc will have index 0 and pc will have index 1

With j one can jump to another program of the input file.

jc would jump to c, which evaluates to [], which is interpreted as 0. So the program with index 0 will be executed with nothing as parameter, resulting in an infinite loop if this program has index `0

Example: negate

e0ci0njct0pjct0

this translates to:

if input is empty then 
	[]
else if first is 1 then
	0 : (jump 0 with parameter (tail input))
else
	1 : (jump 0 with parameter (tail input))

Just so easy to read, isn't it?

Executing

To execute an file just compile the interpreter and call it with filepath parameters e.g. test.val 010 10 this will call test.val with the list of parameters 010 and 10