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authorPreston Pan <preston@nullring.xyz>2024-01-15 21:36:03 -0800
committerPreston Pan <preston@nullring.xyz>2024-01-15 21:36:03 -0800
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-# Introduction {#mainpage}
-Stem aims to be a minimal interpreted stack based programming language
-that allows for metaprogramming and a foreign language interface. It features
-a C API that is elegant and simple. Additionally, garbage collection is
-not needed in this language as the responsibility of writing memory safe
-operations is put in the hands of the maintainers of the builtin functions
-and FLI library maintainers. Therefore, the end user does not need to worry
-about memory allocation while the implementation remains extremely simple.
-
-# Installation
-`make` and `sudo make install`. To generate the html documentation, one must first
-install `doxygen` as an optional dependency. If you are on a BSD or MacOS, you
-must use `gmake`.
-
-# Quickstart
-Because this is a stack based language, all operations are done in reverse polish. For example, to add two numbers together:
-```
-3 4 +
-```
-would return the result `7`. `3` and `4` get pushed onto the stack when they are written out as literals in the language, and `+` is a builtin
-that adds the top two elements of the stack. In this language, there are two kinds of objects: literals
-(strings, ints, floats, words, and literals of type `VERROR` are built in), and quotes that contain these literals (arrays of valid statements that can be evaluated).
-Words might be new to you if you're coming from another language. If you're coming from lisp, a words are analogous to symbols. If you're coming from another
-language, a word is a literal that has the special property that they can be bound to functions. For example, the `+` symbol is a word, which is bound
-to the action of adding two numbers when called.
-
-Let's look at a real example of a REPL implementation in this language:
-```
-repl [ "> " . read strquote eval repl ] func
-repl
-```
-`repl` is a word, which means it is a literal, and everything that is a literal gets pushed onto the stack.
-Everything between the `[` and `]` is an element in a quote. Then, we see the `func` word. If a word is already bound to a function,
-the function gets called instead of getting pushed to the stack, so the `func` function gets called, which takes the top two
-elements off the stack, and creates a function called `repl` where now every time `repl` is called in the future, the quote is evaluated
-instead.
-
-Let's take a closer look at the quote:
-```
-"> " . read strquote eval repl
-```
-`.` takes the first thing off the stack and prints it. In this case, it would print a prompt `> ` every REPL loop. `read` reads a value from stdin,
-then `strquote` turns that string into a quote. `eval` pops the first thing off the stack and evaluates the quote in the same way calling a function
-does, and then finally `repl` gets called again at the end so we can loop forever.
-
-## Factorial
-Let's take a closer look at the factorial function:
-```
-
-```