1 .TH baum 1 "2008-02-13" "baum 0.1"

2 .SH NAME

3 baum \- an esoteric programming language

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5

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7 .SH SYNOPSIS

8 .B baum

9 [\-v]\ [\-c]\ <file>

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13 .SH DESCRIPTION

14 .B baum

15 is an interpreter for the baum programming language which is an experiment to create an esoteric programming language.

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17 Source code is a representation of a tree in which every node is a command or data.

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19 baum is only an experiment and the functionality is (currently) very restricted.

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24 .SH OPTIONS

25

26 .TP

27 .BI \-v

28 Verbose output

29

30 .TP

31 .BI \-c

32 Check source file for validity. Return 0 if source code is valid and something else otherwise.

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34 .TP

35 .BI \-\-help

36 Print usage information

37

38 .TP

39 .BI \-\-version

40 Print version information

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46

47 .SH SOURCE CODE

48

49 Source code are plain text files with one node per line representing the tree. The indention controls in which level in the tree the node is. Indention can be made with SPACE or with TAB characters. Every character means one level.

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51 Empty lines and everything vom the hash symbol (`#') to the end of the line is ignored.

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53 .B An example that echoes `42':

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55 .nf

56 # comment

57 print(0)

58 sum(0) #comment

59 number(40)

60 number(2)

61 .fi

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63

64

65 .SH CONCEPT

66

67 baum programs are represented as nodes in a tree structure. Nodes are of specific kind and contain a value.

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69 The tree is processed recursive starting at the root node. Every node controls it's sons and should only know them; while most nodes only use their leftmost son.

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71 Each node returns a value to it's parent. The internal value of the node could be used in any useful way, but only inside the node.

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73 All values in the language (return values, expected return values and in-node values) should be of the same type, so that every combination of nodes is possible.

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75 Nodes can modify the tree, but should do this only on it's brothers or better only through it's rightmost brother.

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77

78 .SH ERRORS

79

80 .TP

81 .BI 1

82 common error

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84 .TP

85 .BI 3

86 no or more than one source file given

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88 .TP

89 .BI 4

90 invalid node

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92 .TP

93 .BI 127

94 invalid command line options

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97

98 .SH BUGS

99 Please report if you find some.

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101

102 .SH CREDITS

103 Ju developed the idea of

104 .B baum

105 with me in a conversation. Actually it was his idea to use the tree as basic structure.

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109 .SH AUTHOR

110 markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> and julian forster