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@mag-language

The Mag Language

A dynamic, object-oriented language with patterns, classes and multiple dispatch

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Introduction

Mag is an optionally typed programming language with patterns, classes and multiple dispatch.

A simple Fibonacci function could look like this in Mag:

def fib(0) 0
def fib(1) 1
def fib(n Int) fib(n - 2) + fib(n - 1)

You can also implement this using a match statement:

def fib(n Int)
  match n
    case 0 then 0
    case 1 then 1
    case n then fib(n - 2) + fib(n - 1)
  end
end

As you can see, there are three method definitions with different arguments which share the same name. When the method named fib is called, the appropriate method body is chosen at runtime so that fib(0) returns 0, fib(1) returns 1 and fib(n) returns the Fibonacci number for any other input by calling itself recursively and calculating the result.

Credits

Mag is based on the Magpie language by Robert Nystrom, who is a language engineer at Google with a blog and a lot of amazing ideas. His various blog posts are what started and inspired this project, and I plan on continuing his legacy even if the original codebase ceases further development.

However, since there are a few syntactical differences to the original Magpie language, the two languages are source-incompatible and thus have different names. In particular, Bob's implementation substitutes the dot commonly used for calling methods on objects with a space (usually a meaningless character), which I find rather unintuitive, especially for new programmers.

Popular repositories Loading

  1. magc magc Public

    The Mag Language Compiler

    Rust 1 1

  2. magi magi Public

    The Mag Language Interpreter

    Rust

  3. strontium strontium Public

    A bytecode machine with typed registers and multimethods for statically and dynamically typed programming languages.

    Rust

  4. mag mag Public

    The Mag Language Runtime

    Rust

  5. .github .github Public

  6. book book Public

    Language documentation for Mag in a printable book format

Repositories

Showing 6 of 6 repositories
  • .github Public
    mag-language/.github’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Apr 26, 2024
  • book Public

    Language documentation for Mag in a printable book format

    mag-language/book’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Apr 1, 2024
  • strontium Public

    A bytecode machine with typed registers and multimethods for statically and dynamically typed programming languages.

    mag-language/strontium’s past year of commit activity
    Rust 0 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Apr 1, 2024
  • mag Public

    The Mag Language Runtime

    mag-language/mag’s past year of commit activity
    Rust 0 0 0 0 Updated Apr 1, 2024
  • magc Public

    The Mag Language Compiler

    mag-language/magc’s past year of commit activity
    Rust 1 1 0 0 Updated Apr 1, 2024
  • magi Public

    The Mag Language Interpreter

    mag-language/magi’s past year of commit activity
    Rust 0 0 0 0 Updated Jan 14, 2023

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