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<link href="favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon"/>
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<title>How to run BQN</title>
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<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 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>See the subsections below for instructions on specific implementations.</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. It fully supports all primitives except a few cases of structural Under (<code><span class='Modifier2'>⌾</span></code>), but is still missing some advanced features: block headers and multiple body syntax, derived 1-modifiers, and block returns.</p>
<p>Support in the following languages has been implemented:</p>
<ul>
<li>Javascript, in this repository. 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>, targetting high performance. A few times slower than dzaima/BQN, but improving quickly.</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>
<h4 id="javascript">Javascript</h4>
<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>
<h4 id="cbqn">CBQN</h4>
<p>C sources are kept in the <a href="https://github.com/dzaima/CBQN">CBQN</a> repository, but they also require the self-hosted bytecode to be built using cc.bqn in that repository. Although cc.bqn is typically run with dzaima/BQN, this can be changed by modifying the <code><span class='Comment'>#!</span></code> line at the beginning, or linking <code><span class='Value'>dbqn</span></code> to a different executable. To use only the BQN and CBQN repositories, avoiding dzaima/BQN, first build with bqn.js—this is slow, but should take under a minute even on low-end hardware—then switch to CBQN itself afterwards for faster builds.</p>
<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>
<pre><span class='Comment'>#! /bin/bash
</span>
<span class='Value'>java</span> <span class='Function'>-</span><span class='Value'>jar</span> <span class='Function'>/</span><span class='Value'>path</span><span class='Function'>/</span><span class='Value'>to</span><span class='Function'>/</span><span class='Value'>dzaima</span><span class='Function'>/BQN/BQN</span><span class='Value'>.jar</span> <span class='String'>"$@"</span>
</pre>
<p>If compiled with Native Image, <code><span class='Value'>nBQN</span></code> can be used directly instead.</p>
<h4 id="dzaimareference-bqn">dzaima+reference BQN</h4>
<p>This repository contains a dzaima/BQN script <code><span class='Value'>dzref</span></code> that fills in gaps in primitive support with BQN implementations. dzaima/BQN has good enough primitive support that I now almost never use this, but it's still needed for the website generator md.bqn. The command-line arguments are a script to run and followed by the <code><span class='Value'>•args</span></code> to supply to it.</p>
<h3 id="bqn2ngn">BQN2NGN</h3>
<p><a href="https://github.com/mlochbaum/BQN2NGN">BQN2NGN</a> is a prototype implementation in Javascript build to experiment with the langauge, which is now abandoned.</p>
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