The Prim programming language, based on the set of Primitive Recursive functions
The Prim programming language is based on the set of Primitive Recursive functions. Since I had been abbreviating the term as “Prim R,” it seems reasonable to also tip the hat to Robert Prim, whose work is almost entirely unrelated.
Don’t use this.
The recommendation may change in the future, but there is a handful of serious obstacles to getting use out of Prim at this time.
This code is very old (I can’t remember the last time I used Lex and Yacc), and I don’t like what I see. There’s a push for one-liners and avoiding braces for control structures as if they’re somehow costly.
The compiler generates code for Sphinx C—, a sort of high-level assembler that I surely thought was The Future ^TM^ back in the day. The sole compiler is DOS/Windows-based and closed-source, so.
There is at least one obvious bug in generating variable names.
The language is incomplete. Primitive recursion is not yet implemented, making this just a simplified mathematical notation.
So, feel free to mess around with it, but don’t expect Prim to reveal the secrets of the universe…or work.
This Prim distribution comes with both a compiler and an interpreter, run in different ways.
Run the interpreter as expected:
primi <infile>
The compiler is fussier:
primc <infile> <outfile>
There is no error checking on the file names, so enter at your own risk. As mentioned, the compiler produces code for C—, which is only available as a closed-source package, and produces very strange variable names.
Primitive recursive functions are a class of functions that are defined using primitive recursion and composition as central operations; they form an important building block on the way to a full formalization of computability.
The core functions are:
Constant (Z()): Takes no parameters and returns a base value. Arithmetically, this value is zero (0).
Successor (S(n)): Takes a single parameter and returns the successor of that argument. In arithmetic terms, S(n) produces n + 1.
Projection (P:n;i(l)): Takes three parameters—-a maximum list length (n), an index (i), and a comma-delimited list (l)—-and returns the indexed element of the list. For example, P:3;1(10,20,30) returns 20.
Pseudo-Composition (expr->n): To compose functions, Prim provides a simple assignment-based system to feed the results of one function into the parameter of another. Note that this will not suffice for full composition, for a variety of reasons.
Primitive Recursion has not yet been implemented.
Every Prim statement is terminated with a period (.). A question mark (?) may be added to the end of a statement (before the period) to print the value represented.
After completing the Prim implementation, the obvious next step would be to add Minimization. Such a Prim++ would represent mu-Recursive functions, which would make it Turing Complete.
Someday.
Prim comes with two simple example programs.
test.pr: Calculate the numbers zero through three and print them out in reverse order.
prime.pr: Print (does not calculate) the first twenty prime numbers.
The particular brand of tediousness in the examples should indicate how much Prim still needs to grow.