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The Irken Language

Irken is a simplified, statically-typed dialect of Scheme. It uses an ML-like type system supporting parametric polymorphism (i.e., "let polymorphism"), algebraic datatypes, and row types (structural types). With type inference and a pattern-matching syntax, it could be considered ML with a lisp/scheme syntax. For the motivation behind Irken, see History.

We think Irken is cool because:

• type-declarations are not required -- like in Python, Ruby, Javascript, or Clojure
• type errors are reported at compile time -- like in Haskell, Java, C#, or C++
• structural typing supports Duck Typing -- like OCaml or Google Go
• it uses heap allocated stack frames -- like Scheme, Google Go, or Stackless Python

The compiler and libraries are distributed under a simplified BSD License.

Features

• Strongly Static Typed, with Global Type Inference
• Garbage Collected, currently with a Cheney two-space copying collector
• Parametric types (Generics) and Row Polymorphism (Structural Typing), see Datatypes
• First Class Continuations, enabling many features, including very lightweight concurrency
• Exceptions
• No runtime NULL pointer exceptions, see Type Recursion and nil

Syntax

Irken's syntax is nearly identical to Scheme's. The main differences are:

• postfix array-indexing (e.g., (+ x[i] y[i]))
• record literals and field access, e.g. {field0=10 field1="foo" field2="bar"}, a.field1
• colon (:) is a reserved character, it identifies constructors.
• pattern-matching expressions and function definitions, which use ->

[A few other discrepancies will remain undocumented in the hope that they will someday be fixed]

Restrictions

• Lists are monomorphic, all elements must be of the same type
• No function overloading or multi-methods. Each function has a single type signature.
• No runtime dynamic casting. It's not possible for a function to take any type.
• No runtime reflection information. Though information can be built and saved by macros.
• Currently no REPL loop. All programs are compiled.

Next: Simple Code Examples

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References

• Scheme on Wikipedia
• R6RS - Revised 6 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
• Racket PLAI Typed - another typed scheme variant