Matanuska is a BASIC dialect designed for use as a shell. It asks what it would've been like if the classic 80s BASIC was better able to rise to the occasion when it came to disk features and/or competing with DOS.
Matanuska is still in development, and needs a lot of work before it's ready for regular use.
There currently aren't any installable packages for Matanuska. If you would like to try it today, follow the instructions for development.
Matanuska BASIC uses npm for all of its tasks. Refer to package.json for details.
Architectural decisions are documented in ./adrs. Notes on future decisions I haven't made yet are in ./adrs/draft.
The interpreter can run "hello world" in a REPL and evaluate simple expressions. Now is time to add some basic features and button up a few gaps.
- Native commands
- jobs ADR
- parse native commands
- clean up disk command tokens
- create jobs table abstractions
- test jobs table abstractions
- develop runtime instructions for managing jobs
- use jobs to implement
pwd - support \j in prompt rendering
./adrs/draft/processes.md
- Fully featured
cdcommand - Revisit draft ADRs
./adrs/draft/end-keyword.md./adrs/draft/peek-poke.md./adrs/draft/stack-effects.md./adrs/draft/sigil-typecasting.md./adrs/draft/registers.md
- Fully featured
cdcommand - Functions
- Function syntax ADR
- Add keywords to tokens/scanner
- Add support to parser
- Parser tests for functions
- Add new op codes
- Add support in runtime
- Add support to disassembler
- Add support to compiler
- Compiler tests for functions
- Runtime tests
- Examples
- Native function support
- Tests for
InstrShifterin editor - Support entering multiple lines in REPL
- ADR
- Probably a
Readerclass that handlesreadlinestuff - Probably track block nesting
- PS1/PS2 support
SET PS1andSET PS2?
- Runtime tests for
JumpandLoop - STDIO and Background Control
|,&and stream redirection
- Spike on
^Z,^Yandfg - Spike on Rust Jobs Implementation
- Use
neon - Potentially implement process groups
- Use
- User cmdlets
- Dust off
./adrs/draft/cmdlets.md - Import cmdlets from some directory
- Probably move
.matbas_historyand existing files
- Dust off
- Closures
- Closures ADR
- ???
- More robust citree parser
- Setting defaults in List instr is no bueno
- Complete Print/Format syntax
./adrs/draft/print-statement.md- Support ECMA-55?
- Complete ADR
- Print can take a channel config
- Shell variable export
- Date/Time/Duration/TZData types
- Core library
- Host support
- (Language support can come later)
- Consider using
endkeyword as general purpose block end keyword- Finalize ADR
- Support
nextandcontinuekeywords in loops - Support for
HISTSIZEandHISTFILESIZE - Telemetry improvements
- Pipes support
- GOTOs
- Probably a second pass on the chunk
- Probably need to enforce being within current block/scope tree
- Will need to close appropriate scopes
- Type-checking compiler
- Implement type analogues to operations
- Simulated stack in the compiler
- Add trace events to parser and compiler
- Audit/document OTEL environment variables
- Add
tflintandterraform validate- entrypoint
- fireball
- Split matanuska into modules
grabtharimprovements- swc cli build option
- automatically update package.json
- lint-staged and husky support
grabthar clean
- Assert module
- Wrap 'node:assert'
- Throw RuntimeFault
- Investigate Node.js inspector
- Escaped newlines
- Arrays
- Including array literals - BASIC assigns each index one at a time, or uses the
datacommand - Consider using eigen
- Including array literals - BASIC assigns each index one at a time, or uses the
- Environment info in runtime fault outputs
- envinfo for inspiration
- OS
- CPU
- Memory
- Build tool versions (cmake, make, etc) if compiling native code
- Will need to scrub from format test snapshot
- Implement Acey Ducey
center$(n)rnd!(random) function- If/then/goto
- functions
- no-arguments print
endcommand
- Hashes
- Date/time language support
- Exception language support
- Test harness
testandassertcommands- Runtime "test mode" and entrypoint subcommand
- Reporter, possibly based off node-tap
- File I/O
- Research garbage collection
- TypeScript is obviously garbage collected
- But the architecture may hang onto references I don't want
- Tab-complete support in the REPL
- Starship support
- Stream/pipe support
- Break-in
- MSX BASIC uses the
stopandcontcommands to control break-in behavior - Will need to intercept and handle ctrl-c from readline (ctrl-stop in MSX BASIC)
- MSX BASIC uses the
- Symbol dump
./adrs/draft/symbol-dump.md
- Profiling
./adrs/draft/profiler.md- Revisit in light of recent opentelemetry features
- Line-based for users
- Opcode-based for me
- Performance tests
- Benchmarks
- Profile slow benchmarks
- Text Editor plugins
- Generated "exceedingly large" script tests
- Optimize identifier constants - see ADR 019
- Reimplement citree in Rust and chumsky
- String templates
- Module system
- Package manager
- Partial rewrite in Rust and/or C/C++
- Implement entry point in Rust or C/C++
- Port to bun?
- Nice FFI
- Support for bundled executable
- Object support
- Vector/matrix support for 1D/2D integer/float arrays
- Assembler mini-language
- Stack trace tests robust against different node versions
- Architecture Diagram on Google Drawings
- Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom
- My implementations of lox: https://github.com/jfhbrook/crafting-interpreters
- A blog series on adding exception handling to clox
Writing Interactive Compilers and Interpretersby PJ BrownModern MSX BASIC Game Developmentby Raul Portales- List of Java bytecode instructions
- Z80 Instruction Set (Complete)
- OpenJDK Architecture
- cpython internals
- MSX2 Technical Handbook
- MSX-BASIC Instructions - MSX Wiki
- An Introduction to Programming BBC BASIC
- BBC BASIC Reference Manual
- GW-BASIC User's Guide
- BASIC Computer Games Microcomputer Edition
- Fantasy BASIC Consoles
- Atto
- BASIC8 Manual
- MEG-4 Manual
- ECMA-55 Standard
![@dependabot[bot]](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/29110?s=64&v=4){kind=small}