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Cat Language Download, Sources, and Introduction

A prototype Cat interpreter, has just been released into the public domain, and is available for download with C# source code at http://www.cdiggins.com/cat.zip. An introduction to Cat is available at http://www.cdiggins.com/cat.html

Cat is a stack based functional language inspired by the Joy programming language Like Joy, Cat is a cross between Forth and the FP language.

Cat has no variables, no arguments, no constants, and no side-effects. Every Cat program takes a single stack as input, and returns a single stack as output. A Cat program is made up of a sequence of sub-programs. A sub-program may be either a user-defined or atomic (built-in) program. That's about it. It is very easy to implement, analyze, rewrite and optimize.

By cdiggins at 2006-05-28 19:03 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6141 reads

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Bug in EBNF?

program ::= statement* ;
statement ::= def operation = operation* ;

I got the distinct impression one could write
1 2 + ;
and have it be a valid program. Conversely, if the EBNF is not in error, what is the entry point for a Cat program?

By Logan Capaldo at Sun, 2006-05-28 23:27 | login or register to post comments

Good catch. My EBNF is not

Good catch. My EBNF is not accurate. In the interpreter you can write: "1 2 +" (with or without a trailing semicolon) and it will execute. The interpreter prints the top of the stack for you automatically.

A file would typically contain just a series of functions. So the entry point is just the name of whatever function you want. For example:

  def a = 1 2 +;
  def b = 3 4 +;

You can enter the program at either "a" or "b". Am I clearing things up, or just making it murkier?

By cdiggins at Mon, 2006-05-29 01:47 | login or register to post comments

Yep, clear

Yeah it's clear now. Reading all this LtU has made me pay maybe a little to much attention to (E)BNF grammars and my brain goes nuts when it can't parse something ;)

By Logan Capaldo at Mon, 2006-05-29 18:51 | login or register to post comments

Another bug in EBNF

It doesn't mention square brackets.

By Qrczak at Mon, 2006-05-29 11:19 | login or register to post comments

Postscript anyone???

My first view of CAT (and Joy, to which some CAT related site refers) reminded me strongly of Postscript.

I like the definition of operators in Postscript a lot more:


/symbol { ...program... } def

No special syntax is required here. You could for example do the following to generate two synonymous program definitions


{ ...program... } dup /name1 exch def /name2 exch def

or have Postscript programs generate or modify Postscript programs.

My favorite however is the Postscript interpreter in Postscript:


{ currentfile token { exec } { exit } ifelse } loop

By dolf at Tue, 2006-05-30 18:47 | login or register to post comments