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diff --git a/docs/running.html b/docs/running.html index 457941ce..10e72c01 100644 --- a/docs/running.html +++ b/docs/running.html @@ -5,12 +5,17 @@ </head> <div class="nav"><a href="https://github.com/mlochbaum/BQN">BQN</a> / <a href="index.html">main</a></div> <h1 id="how-to-run-bqn">How to run BQN</h1> -<p>There are currently two active BQN implementations: the self-hosted one in this repository, and the independent dzaima/BQN. Neither is entirely complete but they are quite capable for pure programming tasks (say, implementing a compiler). dzaima/BQN has good performance while self-hosted is about a thousand times slower. I tend to develop parts of applications in the online REPL and move to dzaima/BQN scripts in order to run them.</p> -<h3 id="bqn">BQN</h3> +<p>There are currently two active BQN implementations: the self-hosted one in this repository, and the independent dzaima/BQN. Neither is entirely complete but they are quite capable for pure programming tasks (say, implementing a compiler). dzaima/BQN has good performance while self-hosted is a few hundred times slower. I tend to develop parts of applications in the online REPL and move to dzaima/BQN scripts in order to run them.</p> +<h3 id="self-hosted-bqn">Self-hosted BQN</h3> <p>The online REPL is <a href="https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/try.html">here</a>. The file <a href="https://github.com/mlochbaum/BQN/blob/master/docs/bqn.js">docs/bqn.js</a> is zero-dependency Javascript, and can be loaded from HTML or Node.js. For command line use, call the Node.js script <a href="https://github.com/mlochbaum/BQN/blob/master/bqn.js">bqn.js</a>, passing a file and <code><span class='Value'>•args</span></code>, or <code><span class='Function'>-</span><span class='Value'>e</span></code> to execute all remaining arguments directly and print the results. <a href="https://observablehq.com/@lsh/bqn">This notebook</a> shows how to run it in an Observable notebook.</p> -<p>The version of BQN in this repository is implemented mainly in BQN itself—the compiler is entirely self-hosted, while the runtime is built from a small number of starting functions using preprocessed BQN. It completely supports the core language except for block headers and multiple body syntax, and a few cases of structural Under (<code><span class='Modifier2'>⌾</span></code>). The Javascript-based compiler is also slow, taking about 0.01 seconds plus 0.3 seconds per kilobyte of source (this is purely due to the slow runtime, as dzaima+reference achieves 1ms/kB with the same compiler once warmed up).</p> -<p>Because self-hosted BQN requires only a simple virtual machine to run, it is <a href="implementation/vm.html">fairly easy</a> to embed it in another programming language by implementing this virtual machine. The way data is represented is part of the VM implementation: it can use native arrays or a custom data structure, depending on what the language supports. An initial implementation will be very slow, but can be improved by replacing functions from the BQN-based runtime with native code. As the VM system can be hard to work with if you're not familiar with it, I advise you to contact me to discuss this option it you are interested.</p> -<p>In progress VMs are <a href="https://github.com/dzaima/CBQN">CBQN</a> in C, and <a href="https://github.com/cannadayr/ebqn">ebqn</a> in Erlang. Although both of these execute BQN just like the JS version, neither is considered useful for any purpose yet. CBQN is likely to become the main high-performance BQN implementation but is currently only a few times faster than Javascript and has an interface that's only useful for testing. ebqn is extremely slow—hours to compile.</p> +<p>Fully supports all primitives except a few cases of structural Under (<code><span class='Modifier2'>⌾</span></code>), but still missing some advanced features: namespaces, block headers and multiple body syntax, derived 1-modifiers, and block returns.</p> +<p>This version of BQN is <a href="implementation/index.html">implemented</a> mainly in BQN itself, but a host language supplies basic functionality and can also replace primitives for better performance. This also allows <a href="doc/embed.html">embedding</a>, where programs in the host language can include BQN code. Support in the following languages has been implemented:</p> +<ul> +<li>Javascript; see above. Slow (compiles at ~5kB/s) but usable.</li> +<li>dzaima/BQN (<a href="https://github.com/mlochbaum/BQN/blob/master/bqn.bqn">bqn.bqn</a>), mainly for testing.</li> +<li><a href="https://github.com/dzaima/CBQN">C</a>, for an eventual high-performace implementation. Currently slower than dzaima/BQN and missing usability features.</li> +<li><a href="https://github.com/cannadayr/ebqn">Erlang</a>, intended for embedding. Too slow to be practical yet: minutes to compile short programs.</li> +</ul> <h3 id="dzaimabqn">dzaima/BQN</h3> <p><a href="https://github.com/dzaima/BQN/">dzaima/BQN</a> is an implementation in Java created by modifying the existing dzaima/APL. It should be easy to run on desktop Linux and Android. It is still in development and has almost complete syntax support but incomplete primitive support: major missing functionality is dyadic Depth (<code><span class='Modifier2'>⚇</span></code>), Windows (<code><span class='Function'>↕</span></code>), and many cases of set functions (<code><span class='Function'>⊐⊒∊⍷</span></code>, mostly with rank >1).</p> <p>In this repository and elsewhere, dzaima/BQN scripts are called with <code><span class='Comment'>#! /usr/bin/env dbqn</span></code>. This requires an executable file <code><span class='Value'>dbqn</span></code> somewhere in your path with the following contents:</p> |