README.md

Scryer Shen

An experimental, in-progress implementation of the Shen programming language in Racket and Scryer Prolog.

Unlike most other implementations of Shen, scryer-shen implements Shen directly in its host languages without bootstrapping from a seed implementation of KLambda.

The intention is to allow direct integration of Scryer Prolog inside a Shen implementation. Scryer Prolog is a performant ISO Prolog system with powerful metaprogramming capabilities and highly general and expressive constraint logic programming libraries over integers and booleans among many other features.

The integration should naturally extend Shen's logic and type systems to allow styles of dependently typed programming and theorem proving akin to those found in programming languages like Agda and Lean.

Progress to a fully featured Shen implementation

• Add define, defun
• Add defmacro and package
• Add defprolog and prolog?
• Add if and cond forms
• Add @v, @p and @s constructors/patterns
• Add freeze and thaw
• Add deftype and support for type signatures in functions
• Use raco and Racket's compiler API to automatically download, compile and package Scryer Prolog with Scryer Shen
• Implement the rest of the Shen standard library
• Implement Shen-YACC

Installation

scryer-shen can be run in the Racket REPL (for #lang shen modules) or compiled to an executable using

# Install [GNU Make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/#download)
# Install [racket](https://download.racket-lang.org/)
# before 
# - logging into a shell terminal, and
# - executing the following commands
# from cloned `scryer-shen` project root directory
# before passing `ensure-scryer-shen-executable-availability` target to make binary
# so that making `shen` executable is made available
make ensure-scryer-shen-executable-availability

The scryer-prolog executable must be copied to the install directory dist/bin. It can be downloaded from the above link and built by following the instructions there. Soon this requirement will be automated through raco.

Non-standard extensions of Shen Prolog

Scryer Shen has full access to Scryer Prolog's library modules. They are loaded in prolog? forms using the non-standard syntax

(1-) (prolog? (use-module (library clpz)))

Also unlike standard Shen Prolog, Scryer Shen Prolog supports functor notation for the sake of partial evaluation in libraries like clpz:

(2-) (defprolog fac
0 1 <--;
N R <-- (#> N 0)
        (#= N1 -(N 1))
        (#= R *(N F1))
        (fac N1 F1);)
(3-) (prolog? (fac X 120) (return X))
5

-(N 1) and *(N F1) annotate the ISO Prolog functors -(N,1) and *(N,F1) while s-expressions annotate either Shen function calls or Prolog predicate calls as in standard Shen Prolog.

Scryer Shen Prolog predicates and queries are converted to ISO Prolog syntax and streamed to the Scryer Prolog subprocess. The interaction between Scryer Shen and Scryer Prolog is displayed in the Scryer Prolog Debug Window, which for the above interaction is

These and other new features are described in this wiki article.

An example interaction

The loaded files are found in examples.

(0-) (tc +)
true

(1+) (load "examples/days.shen")
days#type
next-day : (day --> day)
loaded : symbol

(2+) (load "examples/apply.shen")
h-list-to-function-sig
heterogeneous-lists#type
true
heterogeneously-mappable-functions#type
apply : ((h-mappable [A | B] C) --> ((h-list [A | B]) --> C))
loaded : symbol

(3+) (apply + [1 2 3])
type error

(4+) (apply + [1 2])
3 : number

(5+) [1 saturday]
[1 saturday] : (h-list [number symbol])

(6+) (apply + [1])
curried:+ : (number --> number)

(7+) (apply +)
curried:apply : ((h-list [number]) --> (number --> number))

(8+) (fn apply)
apply : ((h-mappable [A | B] C) --> ((h-list [A | B]) --> C))