Nomsu

Nomsu (named after Nomic, and its creator, Peter Suber) is a programming language designed to be used for playing games of Nomic, or engaging in other similar activities revolving around natural language rule-making and self modification.

Dependencies

The language compiler was written in Moonscript, using the LPEG library for parsing. LPEG is a dependency, so you need to install it in order to run the compiler. All of the moon files have been compiled into lua for convenience, so Moonscript is not a dependency.

Usage

• To get a nomsu REPL, simply run lua nomsu.lua.
• To run a .nom file with nomsu code, run lua nomsu.lua your_file.nom. Or lua nomsu.lua - if reading from stdin.
• (Advanced/optional) To precompile a .nom file into lua, either run lua nomsu.lua your_file.nom -o output_file.lua or simply lua nomsu.lua -c your_file.nom (which will default to outputting to your_file.nom.lua). It is not necessary to precompile .nom files, but it can speed things up if it's a file that gets loaded by require "your_file.nom" a lot. require % can either take a .nom file (it will automatically look for a .nom.lua precompiled version), or a .lua file.
• More usage options are avilable via lua nomsu.lua --help.

Layout

• nomsu.moon/nomsu.lua - The nomsu compiler. The compiler is written in Moonscript, but a lua version of the file is provided in this repository for convenience.
• utils.moon/utils.lua - A set of utility functions used by nomsu.moon. A lua version of this is also provided for convenience.
• consolecolors.lua - Lua module that defines ANSI color codes for colored console output (used internally in nomsu.moon).
• examples/how_do_i.nom - A simple walkthrough of some of the features of nomsu, written in nomsu. This is a good place to start.
• examples/sample_code.nom - Some additional sample nomsu code.
• examples/sample_game.nom - A sample game of Nomic, written in nomsu.
• lib/collections.nom - Core library definitions related to collections, like lists and dictionaries.
• lib/control_flow.nom - Core library definitions related to control flow, like if statements and for loops.
• lib/core.nom - Core library file that loads other core library files. Files are loaded in dependency order.
• lib/metaprogramming.nom - Core library essential functionality for metaprogramming, including macros to define macros, rules to define rules, and other mind-bending Escher-like paradoxes.
• lib/moonscript.nom - Core library definitions for writing in moonscript. This is optional, and requires Lua's "moon" package.
• lib/operators.nom - Core library definitions for operators like = and +.
• lib/permissions.nom - Core library definitions for rules that modify the permission levels of rules.
• lib/plurals.nom - Core library modulre that defines some simple rules to facilitate pluralizing and singularizing words. This is a bit frivolous, but can be useful for natural language.
• lib/secrets.nom - Core library module that allows for closure-like behavior in nomsu for hiding data within rule definitions that can't be accessed elsewhere.
• lib/testing.nom - Core library definitions for some testing facilities.
• lib/utils.nom - Core library definitions of common utility functions, like sum of % and sqrt %.
• compile_lib.sh - script to precompile lib/*.nom so they can be loaded faster. This is optional.

Extra

There is a vim plugin for the language available in the Vim Nomsu repository.