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MiniC Language Manual

Lexical Considerations

miniC is a case sensitive language and all keywords are in lowercase.

Identifiers

Identifiers are terminals used for naming functions and variables, they can consist of alphanumeric characters and underscores but they must not begin with a digit. Since miniC is case sensitive, foo and FOO are treated as distinct identifiers.

Keywords

Keywords are special sequences used as a part of the language itself. The following keywords are reserved in miniC:

if

else

for

integer

bool

float

char

while

Macro Syntax

Data Types

The language will contain the following primitive data types:

Numbers

In order to reduce diversity of data types, we introduce only one data type per format.

Integers

We assume that maximum input while testing an algorithm would be 10^18 but the calculation can involve multiplication so maximum value can be 10^36. There is only one data type called integer which is 128-bit wide and stores signed numbers.

Boolean Operations

Integers would also support bitwise boolean operations such as and, or, xor, not by using words themselves in lowecase as the operator name.

Floating Point

We would also need floating point numbers, we call this data type float and it would store floating point numbers in the IEEE format. This would correspond to a long double in C.

Arithmetic Operations

Arithmetic operations can be done by using their respective symbols, + for addition, - for subtraction, * for multiplication and / for division.

Operator	Note
+,-	Unary Operators
*,/,mod	Multiplicative Group
+,-	Additive Group

Boolean

We call this data type bool that stores only true or false values.

Boolean Operations

This data type would also support boolean operations such as and, or, xor, not by using words themselves in lowecase as the operator name.

Characters

We call this data type char which stores UTF-8 8-bit wide characters, capable of supporting most languages.

Arrays

Fixed-size arrays could be declared by appending size in square brackets ([SIZE]) at the end of the data type itself. Note that this is different from C/C++ where [] are appended at the end of the identifier. For example, int a[100] in C/C++ would be integer[100] a. 2-D arrays could also be declared similarly like integer[100][100] b.

Macro Syntax for Data Types

Declaration

Assignment

Control Statements

The control statements could be used to make decisions.

if-then

    if(x > 0) {
        // Code block enclosed in curly braces
        x = 3;
    }

The if command is followed by parentheses, which contain the comparison that the if keyword tests. The comparison should result in a bool output. The statements that follow if the comparison is true are enclosed in the curly braces. It can be referred to as a code block.

Macro Syntax

if-then-else

We introduce the else keyword for this. The else keyword is a second, optional part of an if cluster of statements. It groups together statements that are to be executed when the condition that if tests for isn’t true.

    if(x > 0) {
        // Code block enclosed in curly braces
        x = 3;
    } else {
        x = -3;
    }

Macro Syntax

Ternary Operator

Similar, to the if-then-else there is an inline alternative called the Ternary Operator. It is of the form condition ? option1 :option2 where the result of the operator is option1 if the condition is true and option2 otherwise.

Loops

A loop repeats a code block certain number of times or until a condition is true.

for-loop

The for-loop is generally used for repeating a code several times in conjunction with a counter. The for keyword defines a starting condition, an ending condition, and the statement that is run on while the loop is being executed over and over.

    for(starting; while_true; do_this)
        statement;

Macro Syntax

while-loop

Similar to the for-loop, the while-loop also repeats a block of code several times. However, it only comes with one conditional statement

    while(condition)
        statement;

Macro Syntax

Functions

Declaration

A function can be declared by specifying the return type, the name of the function and arguments in parenthesis preceded by their respective data types. A function declared without a return type returns nothing.

    integer foo(integer x, integer y) {
        // statements
        return x+y;
    }

Macro Syntax

Semantics

The program consists of two parts: preamble and main.

Preamble

The preamble consists of headers that tell the compiler which library to import (we assume that the miniC language has similar libraries as C) and contain function definitions.

Main

The main section is written inside the function main() which can optionally take two arguments, first the count of command line arguments and second the respective arguments. Its return type is integer, the exit code of the program. When a program starts its execution it executes the code inside the main() function.

Checks

1. The program must contain exactly one main() function which must return an exit code.

2. A variable must be explicitly declared in the same context before being referred.

3. Check for ambiguity such as the Dangling Else

4. Anytime the index of an array is accessed the index must be of type integer.

5. All the included header files must exist in the current system.

1. This programming language is designed to be similar to C but has a few modifications to make it more suitable for quick problem solving such as testing algorithms etc. In order to do this, there is less diversity of data types (like int, unsigned int, int64_t etc.) so that the programmer can focus on the logic of the code.