quail-language / quail

Second iteration of a super-flexible and simple Quail scripting language

Quail

An easy-to-use scripting language with simple yet powerful syntax

Website · Docs · Issues

About project

Quail is an easy-to-use scripting language with simple yet powerful syntax, embeddable in Java applications and supporting a plenty of different approaches for designing code and writing it.

Find out more on the website

Quail's main purposes are: developing utilities, using it as a script language for bigger project and using it for education.

Installation (automatic)

On Windows and Linux

Download and run installer from downloads page

If you are on Linux, don't forget to chmod +x quail-installer.sh

After you've installed Quail with this installer, you can access Quail Runtime with quail command and Quail Development Kit with quail-qdk command. Find out more about commands in Quail Specification Chapter 12

Manual installation

On Windows

1. Make sure you have at least Java 8 installed
2. Download your chosen Quail version
3. Place qre.jar and/or qdk.jar into some folder on your computer
4. Create an environment variable called QUAIL_HOME and set it to that folder
5. Place the following contents into file at C:\Windows\quail.bat

   @echo off
   if exist "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" (
   "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" -jar "%QUAIL_HOME%\qre.jar" %*
   )
   if not exist "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" (
   java -jar "%QUAIL_HOME%\qre.jar" %*
   )
   

6. Place the following contents into file at C:\Windows\quail-qdk.bat

   @echo off
   if exist "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" (
   "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" -jar "%QUAIL_HOME%\qdk.jar" %*
   )
   if not exist "%QUAIL_HOME%\jre\jdk1.8.0_402\bin\java.exe" (
   java -jar "%QUAIL_HOME%\qdk.jar" %*
   )
   

7. Now you can access Quail with quail and quail-qdk commands

On Linux

1. Make sure you have at least Java 8 installed
2. Download your chosen Quail version
3. Place qre.jar and/or qdk.jar into /bin/quail-jars/
4. Place the following contents into file at /bin/quail

   #!/bin/bash
   java -jar /bin/quail-jars/qre.jar $@
   

5. Place the following contents into file at /bin/quail-qdk

   #!/bin/bash
   java -jar /bin/quail-jars/qdk.jar $@
   

6. Run

   sudo chmod +x /bin/quail
   sudo chmod +x /bin/quail-qdk
   

7. Now you can access Quail with quail and quail-qdk commands

First test

Write a short script:

print("Hello, World!")

Then execute it:

quail run myscript.q

You will see the output in your console

Where to go next?

If you are completely new or an amateur to programming, read Getting Started with Quail 2.0+

If you are very confident with different languages, and you are aware of abstract syntax concepts, you can go straight to Quail Specification, Quail Core Docs and Quail Library Docs

Also check out examples.

License

This work is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0

Contact

You can contact the developer in the Issues tab or in Discord server.

Developer

Project was being built from scratch and is being developed now only by @Tapeline

quail's Issues

Feature-request: Python-like lambdas

Right now (as of issue creation time) anonymous functions can only be declared like this:

f = (x) -> return x^2

Which gets pretty annoying when it comes to using functions like map:

map((x) -> return num(x), input().split())

The suggestion is that another operator should be added, which will allow creation of one-expression instant-return lambdas:

map((x) => num(x), input().split())

Suggestions for operator symbol:

• =>
• ->:
• other suggestions could be added in comments below

This operator should be a syntaxic sugar and at parse-time should unfold into regular lambda.

Fix occasional error display bugs

From time to time instead of outputting the erroneous line, interpreter outputs following:

!!! internal error !!! unable to display line !!!

E.g. with this code:

f = x -> print(x)
f("Hello")

I get:

Parser error:
At character 6 line 1
 1 | !!! internal error !!! unable to display line !!!
     ^~
Unparseable expression or statement

Request: create a built-in request library

Right now (as of issue creation time) Quail lacks the ability to connect to the internet. It should have a built-in internet request library (for example like requests in Python).

Request function signature suggestion:

function get(
    string url,
    dict queryParameters={},
    string|dict data={},
    list files=[],
    list cookies=[],
    dict headers={},
    dict|void auth=null,
    num timeout=-1
) {}

which can return an object with response info (content-type, headers, cookies, body, etc.)

Similar functions are suggested for other HTTP methods (POST, PATCH, etc.)