Pointless: A Scripting Language for Learning and Fun (v0.1.0)

Why Learn Pointless?

Documentation and examples at https://ptls.dev

Email: contact@ptls.dev

Pointless 0.1.0 brings a number of changes from the initial release, informed by feedback and experience. The latest implementation of Pointless is interpreted, rather than compiled, and is written in Dart. This move marks a deemphasis on performance with a focus instead on improved language design and faster development. It's my hope that the new Dart-based implementation will make Pointless easier for others to install, use, and modify.

New utilities:

• A repl for interactive programming
• An web-based language playground
• Auto-generated API docs for prelude functions

Language updates:

• Syntax consolidation and updates
• Better error messages with location information for incorrect types (showing where in the code the incorrect type came from)
• Explicit exports for multi-file projects
• Expanded standard library
• Try / catch error handling mechanism
• Support for labeled objects

Implementation updates:

• A smaller, easier to edit codebase
• Improved Windows support
• Bug fixes
• MIT licensed source code

Site updates:

• Updated documentation
• More in-depth examples
• Automatic syntax highlighting
• Faster loading

Installation

You can try Pointless online without installing.
To install Pointless locally, you'll need to have Git installed to clone the repository, as well as the Dart SDK.

Installing on Linux, Mac and Windows (PowerShell):

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/pointless-lang/pointless.git
   

2. Enter the repo directory

   cd pointless
   

3. Download Dart dependencies:

   pub get
   

4. You can now run the Pointless repl using:

   dart lib/pointless.dart
   

   or supply a path to a file to run; for example:

   dart lib/pointless.dart examples/beer/beer.ptls
   

   (for repl readline support, try rlwrap)

Compiling the interpreter with dart2native:

Compiling the interpreter avoids the startup overhead of the Dart VM.

After performing the steps above:

• Linux and Mac:

  Run the following commands in the repository root (generates ./bin/pointless):

  dart2native lib/pointless.dart -o bin/pointless
  

  Alternatively, using Make, simply run:

  make
  

  Now you can run Pointless like this:

  bin/pointless examples/beer/beer.ptls
  

• Windows:

  Run the following commands in the repository root (generates ./bin/pointless.exe):

  dart2native lib/pointless.dart -o bin/pointless.exe
  

  Now you can run Pointless like this:

  bin/pointless.exe examples/beer/beer.ptls
  

Contributions are welcome!