ziglang/zig at 4236b85c722b36cb31595634bae0ff28d6082761

zig lang

An experiment in writing a low-level programming language with the intent to replace C. Zig intends to be a small language, yet powerful enough to write readable, safe, optimal, and concise code to solve any computing problem.

Goals

Ability to run arbitrary code at compile time and generate code.

Completely compatible with C libraries with no wrapper necessary.

Creating a C library should be a primary use case. Should be easy to export an auto-generated .h file.

Generics such as containers.

Do not depend on libc unless explicitly imported.

First class error code support.

Include documentation generator.

Eliminate the need for make, cmake, etc.

Friendly toward package maintainers.

Eliminate the need for C headers (when using zig internally).

Ability to declare dependencies as Git URLS with commit locking (can provide a tag or sha1).

Tagged union enum type.

Opinionated when it makes life easier. Tab character in source code is a compile error. Whitespace at the end of line is a compile error.

Resilient to parsing errors to make IDE integration work well.

Source code is UTF-8.

Shebang line OK so language can be used for "scripting" as well.

Ability to mark functions as test and automatically run them in test mode.

Memory zeroed by default, unless you initialize with "uninitialized".

Roadmap

Hello, world. Build AST Code Gen Produce .o file.

Produce executable file instead of .o file.

Add debugging symbols.

Debug/Release mode.

C style comments.

Unit tests.

Simple .so library

How should the Widget use case be solved? In Genesis I'm using C++ and inheritance.

Primitive Numeric Types:

zig C equivalent Description

i8 | int8_t | signed 8-bit integer u8 | uint8_t | unsigned 8-bit integer