README.md

This package is a library implementing a very simple expression language written in Go for interpreting one-liners.

> 5 * 10 == 50 ? 'hello' : 'world'
'hello'

Note that this library is very new and is mostly educational. For a more refined implementation, see AntonMedv's Expr library here: https://github.com/antonmedv/expr

The expression language is just like what you see above. Just a one liner language which can evaluate numbers, strings, objects, and arrays. In particular, there are no:

1. No loops
2. No user defined variables
3. No user defined functions

Use cases

Why would you ever want to use something so simple? One use case is as a DSL for configuration files. You can let users enter in a string in your JSON file, and interpret it using the interpreter provided.

In this case, the limitations of the language are a strength. Everything has to fit into one line, so it works well with JSON. You can only jump forwards in this language, so users' one liners can't run indefinitely. This language is intentionally not Turing complete.

{
  "radius": 3,
  "circumference": "3.14158 * radius * 2",
  "area": "3.14158 * radius * radius"
}

Where do the variables come from?

As you can see above, you can evaluate variables, but users just can't define them in the language. So, they have to be provided by the host environment. In the above example, the host environment has to provide radius to the VM, by parsing the JSON file. Here's how the above snippet would be implemented in main.go

type Circle struct {
	radius int64
	circumference string
	area string
}
func main() {
	var circle Circle
	err := json.Marshal(&circle, fileBytes)
	m := vm.New()
	// Host environment provides the variable for use
	// BInt is the type that the interpreter uses
	env := vm.VMEnv{
		"radius": bytecode.BInt(circle.radius)
	}

	vmResult, err := m.EvalString(circle.circumference, env)
	circumference := vmResult.Val
	fmt.Println("circumference", circumference)

	vmResult, err := m.EvalString(circle.area, env)
	area := vmResult.Val
	fmt.Println("area", area)
}
// prints:
// circumference 18.849480
// area 28.274220

What else is in the language?

See vm_test.go

Speed

Roughly ~100x slower than native compiled code

Before:

goos: windows
goarch: amd64
pkg: github.com/thomastay/expression_language/pkg/vm
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz
BenchmarkCollatz-4                  7858            163786 ns/op          132617 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3935415               331.4 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

Before SOA splitting:

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 10000            108641 ns/op          132618 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3774889               320.3 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

After constant table

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 10000            113586 ns/op          132618 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3688999               351.4 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

After reduction to uint8

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 10000            109552 ns/op          132618 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3923805               321.6 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

After immediate expressions

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 10000            117549 ns/op          132617 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3730506               315.6 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

After shrinking stack to 4 elements

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 25077             42454 ns/op            9736 B/op        321 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3324724               326.2 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op

After reusing stack

BenchmarkCollatz-4                 47052             30075 ns/op            1544 B/op        193 allocs/op
BenchmarkCollatzRegular-4        3568460               288.6 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op