jlox

jlox is an optimizing Lox compiler for the JVM. The front-end is unmodified from the jlox implementation from the Crafting Interpreters book.

jlox adds the following:

• An optimizer which performs some basic optimizations like constant folding.
• A compiler that uses ProGuardCORE to generate Java class files and write an executable jar.

build and run

Before the initial build, you will need to run a couple of commands to install the craftinginterpreters submodule.

git submodule init
git submodule update

If you do not do this first, you will get a bunch of compile errors about missing classes, like Stmt, Expr, and Function.

The Gradle build task will run the Lox tests and build a jar in the lib folder. The jar can be compiled without running the tests with the copyJar task.

A Lox script can be executed by passing the script as the first command line parameter. An optional second parameter specifies the output jar.

$ ./gradlew copyJar
$ echo "print \"Hello World\"" > hello.lox
$ bin/jlox hello.lox hello.jar
$ java -jar hello.jar
Hello World