Write lisp in python

#python #lisp

I recently thought about how I can merge lisp programming language and python, and tried to write a lisp syntax like compiler in python. Some thing that can convert the following lisp code:

(repeat 2 (write-ln (+ 10 20)))

to this tree:

word: "repeat"
    int: 2
    word: "write-ln"
        symbol: +
            int: 10
            int: 20

And then write an executor for executing tree.

But I figured out that I don't need to write a lisp syntax parser. Instead I can use python builtins types directly.

for example:

('repeat', ('print', ('add', 10, 20)))

And then the result of my thoughts was that I wrote this simple python builtins types compiler. (pbtc for shorthand)

#!/usr/bin/python3

# filename: main.py

import itertools
import sys

def add(*args):
    result = args[0] if len(args) != 0 else None
    for arg in args[1:]:
        result += arg
    return result

def sub(*args):
    result = args[0] if len(args) != 0 else None
    for arg in args[1:]:
        result -= arg
    return result

def mul(*args):
    result = args[0] if len(args) != 0 else None
    for arg in args[1:]:
        result *= arg
    return result

def div(*args):
    result = args[0] if len(args) != 0 else None
    for arg in args[1:]:
        result /= arg
    return result

def true_div(*args):
    result = args[0] if len(args) != 0 else None
    for arg in args[1:]:
        result //= arg
    return result

def join(sep, args):
    return sep.join(args)

tuple_compilers = {
    'add': add,
    'sub': sub,
    'mul': mul,
    'div': div,
    'tdiv': true_div,
    'print': lambda *args: print(*args),

    'join': join,
    'repeat': itertools.repeat,
}

def compile_tuple(tree, memory, compile):
    if len(tree) == 0:
        raise ValueError('invalid tuple length: {}'.format(len(tree)))
    if not isinstance(tree[0], str):
        raise ValueError('invalid tuple instruction: {}'.format(tree[0]))
    if tree[0] not in tuple_compilers:
        raise ValueError('unknown tuple instruction: {}'.format(tree[0]))
    args = []
    for node in tree[1:]:
        args.append(compile(node, memory))
    return tuple_compilers[tree[0]](*args)

compilers = {
    tuple: compile_tuple,
    (list, dict, str, int, float, bytes): 
        lambda tree, memory, compile: tree,
}

def compile_tree(tree, compilers, memory = None):
    self = lambda tree, memory: compile_tree(tree, compilers, memory)
    for _type, compile in compilers.items():
        if isinstance(tree, _type):
            return compile(tree, memory, self)
    raise TypeError(type(tree).__name__)

with open(sys.argv[1]) as infile:
    globals_dict = {}
    exec('grammar = ' + infile.read())

compile_tree(grammar, compilers)

it's not safe, it's slow, but works.

testing:


# filename: lispy

('print', 
    ('join', ' ', ('repeat', ('join', ' ', ['hi', 'bye']), 10))
    )

$./main.py lispy:

hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye hi bye

It's fun...

Maybe later, I wrote a more complete version of this and publish it somewhere, as open source.

Top comments (2)

Jakub T. Jankiewicz • Dec 26 '20

I don't see any compilation step, it seems that what you've built is interpreter not the compiler. Example compiler would be script that generate python code based on your lips like syntax and you would execute that outside of the compiler.