The Sartre Programming Language =============================== John Colagioia, 199? Introduction ------------ The Sartre programming language is named for the late existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in Sartre have essentially no philosophical purpose; they just are. Thus, Sartre programs are often left to define their own functions. Unlike traditional programming languages (or maybe very much like them), nothing in Sartre is guaranteed, except maybe for the fact that nothing is guaranteed. The Sartre compiler, therefore, must be case insensitive (technically, it requires all capital letters, but since nothing matters anyway, why should this?). Names in Sartre may only contain letters (and only capital letters, at that, but nobody really cares that much), and maybe some trailing digits, but nothing else. No standard mathematical functionality is supplied in Sartre. Instead, nihilists are created, which may damage the properties inherent to the data, and nihilators are executed to reclaim storage dynamically. Sartre programmers, perhaps somewhat predictably, tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties. No comments will be made on the level of contrast between the Sartre programmer and any other programmer. In the words of a Sartre programmer who worked intensely for months, eating whatever junkfood wandered near his cubicle, "I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months, and I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain, ultimate solitude, and collection of Dilbert cartoons are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. From now on, I will live on cigarettes and black coffee," which is the general diet of the Sartre programmer, for obvious reasons. Comments are available in Sartre, though not at all suggested, since nobody really wants to listen to you, anyway, by typing the comment at the beginning of the line, and terminating it (on the same line) with a squiggle (brace) pair ("{}"). Valid Sartre text may be placed after the comment if desired. If comments are absolutely necessary, they should adequately describe the futility of the program and the plight of programmer and computer in a world ruled by an unfeeling God and His compilers, as well as providing explanation of the surrounding program statements. They should not be misspelled, as some compilers may check. Admittedly, while it is not hard to string Sartre statements together to create a Sartre-compilable text file, it can be quite hard to program in the Sartre paradigm. To wit, one may keep creating programs, one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one may seem empty, hollow, like stone. One may want to create a program that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they average two numbers. Sartre Data Types ----------------- The Sartre language has two basic data types, the EN-SOI and the POUR-SOI. The en-soi is a completely filled heap of a specified rank, whereas the pour-soi is a dynamic structure which never has the same value. An integer may also be used in Sartre, but it may only take the value of zero (the Dada extensions to Sartre allow integers to also take on the value of "duck sauce", but that's neither here nor there--unless you happen to like duck sauce, of course). en-soi The en-soi, as mentioned before, is a full heap of a specified rank. As Sartre does not allow pre-initialized data, the actual data in the heap is non-specified (but the heap is "pre-heapified"). Data (en-sois of rank 0) may be "deconstruct"ed from the en-soi, or "rotate"d through. At all times, the en-soi remains a full heap, however. En-sois of rank zero are 32 bits with no inherent meaning. En-sois of higher rank may be defined as each element being of another (same) data type (an en-soi of integers, all with a value of zero (or duck sauce), for example). pour-soi The pour-soi is only, and precisely, what it is not. It may be "unassigned from" a certain value, thereby exactly increasing the number of things it isn't. It is specified to be a two-bit value, so it probably isn't. integer Unlike the integers in most programming languages, Sartre integers all have a value of zero (again, unless the Dada extensions are being used). Like the rest of the dreary universe (duck sauce included), this is something that must be lived with. orthograph The orthograph is a special type of pictogram used in the specification of lexicographic elements. The set of orthographs varies from Sartre implementation to Sartre implementation, but is guaranteed to contain all the so-called "letters" from at least one modern language, transliterated to the closest element of the ASCII set and ordered as the bit-reversed EBCDIC value, assuming those bit-patterns were integers, which they probably aren't. Unavailable orthographs in a given implementation are represented by "frowny faces". As defined, the orthograph is possibly the simplest and most convenient data type to work with. const Not an actual data type, but somewhat useful, is the introduction of the symbolic constant into the Sartre language. Since Sartre does not allow for unconventional, potentially confusing symbols to be strewn about a program (for example, "17" meant to represent a certain quantity of items), this allows the programmer to define a set of symbolic constants he plans to use. To avoid confusion, symbolic constants are defined in unary, using the "wow" (!) as the unit (i.e., !, !!, !!!, !!!!, ...). Symbolic constants must be surrounded in "rabbit ears" (") in use during the action section of the program. Predefined Sartre Instances --------------------------- The following data instances are provided to the Sartre programming environment to facilitate programming certain concepts which would be (and probably should be) nearly impossible otherwise. MAXINT This is the maximum integer value allowed by the particular Sartre implementation: zero. MININT This is the minimum integer value allowed by the particular Sartre implementation. If using the Dada extensions, MININT is duck sauce; if not, it is zero. ORTH0 This is the "initial orthograph" of the Sartre implementation. ORTHL8 This is the "final orthograph" of the implementation. The name is properly pronounced "Orthograph: Lazy Eight". Sartre Program Segments ----------------------- The Sartre program is broken into simple, logical portions. In essence, all things must be declared before usage, and the declaration section comes before the action section (if any). Since the Sartre language has a recursive structure, the Sartre nihilist has the same structure as the main nihilator which is about to be described: Nihilator ; {Nihilist;} Const = ; Consts = ..; Matter { {, } : ;} Act { ;} No more ; . The only difference between a nihilist and the nihilator is that a nihilist does not use the trailing one-spot. Example Matter definitions (data declaration) might be: Const 3 = !!; Matter dooM: integer; Rniqqlj:en-soi, rank "3", of pour-soi; which creates an integer (with a value of 0, since we are not invoking Dada extensions), and a heapified en-soi with seven pour-soi storage locations. Sartre Statement Types ---------------------- `IF ;` The Sartre conditional takes no arguments and then alters program flow accordingly. Put simply, on the condition where the most recently executed nihilator was successful, program execution is transferred to just beyond the next conditional, restarting the search from the beginning, if necessary. `LVAL := expr ;` The Sartre assignment statement takes the bourgois-perceived value of the damned expression and places it in LVAL. If LVAL is a pour-soi, this unassigns a value from the pour-soi. `No Exit ;` A reminder to the program that none of us can escape what we have wrought, or even escape what others have wrought. In programming terms, this may either cause the machine to hang or cause the program not to terminate, depending on the implementation. `Life Is Meaningless ;` A special command which, due to the resignation of the programmer, is permitted to perform a wide variety of tasks, among them, alter the direction of program flow, execute a random function, terminate the program, or positionally invert the bits in the data region. Since the programmer doesn't care anyway, this doesn't really matter. In the (tee-hee) ordinary version of Sartre, this operation is defined at compile-time, and is constant at that statement for each incidence of execution. The Dada extensions, however, redefine meaninglessness (since everything under Dada is meaningless to begin with) to be determined at run- time. Further, it may also logically negate each bit in the dataspace under Dada. `{ data } ;` This invokes the named nihilist and allows it to accomplish its goal. The Sartre scoping rules are somewhat complex in that it may only utilize data which has been accessed previously or any data which it makes up itself. Data which has not yet been accessed is unknown to the Sartre nihilist, however. `again ;` Repeats the last statement, for the computationally-impaired. `Act { ; } No more ;` Allows certain statement-sets to be considered a single, atomic statment. A conditional cannot jump to within such an atomic structure. Predefined Sartre Nihilists --------------------------- ` which` Gets replaced with a zero-rank en-soi with the bit pattern of the orthograph. The orthograph may be replaced by a symbolic constant, and returns the bit-pattern that would be associated if the symbolic constant were an integer, which it isn't, otherwise it would be zero. ` that` Gets replaced with the orthograph that matches the bit- pattern in the zero-rank en-soi. ` ` \ is one of "and", "or", or "xor", and returns the bitwise logical operation between the two zero-rank en-sois. `NOT ` This makes the pour-soi what it isn't, even if it is. `annihilate ;` Clears the values (sets to arbitrary values) of any data in the program. Proceeds to destroy any dynamically allocated storage. If no dynamic storage exists, causes a "Bad Faith" error in the program. ` Dump ;` Prints the zero-rank en-soi to the screen as up to four orthographs. The en-soi may be replaced with an orthograph, in which case the orthograph itself is printed. ` Get ;` Allows an orthograph to be input from the keyboard and stored in the specified orthograph. The orthograph may be replaced by any-rank en-soi of orthographs, in which case the statement will read in enough orthographs to fill the en-soi, then "heapify" the en-soi. ` Zip` First, removes an element from the en-soi, then adds the new element and "heapifies," returning the removed element. ` Dir` Flips direction of the en-soi's "heapification." If the Dir nihilist is never executed, the heapification of the en-soi is, by default, descending. ` Flip ;` Flips the bit represented by \ in \. ` Concat` Returns the concatenated bitpatterns of the two \ elements. Sample Sartre Programs ---------------------- Nihilator SartreExample1; Act No more ; . This program can be appreciated for its ability to not sort the input list of values in ascending order. It's elegance and simplicity in not accomplishing this goal are admirable. To fully appreciate that sorting is the activity being denied the user, as opposed to, say, searching or some sort of filtering, one should stare at the (lack of) program output forever and not turn on the lights when it gets dark. Nihilator SartreExample2; Act IF ; again ; No more ; . This program fully considers the implications of its existance. It begins by questioning itself and, if successful, control flow moves to find the next conditional, of which there is none, so flow wraps to itself. If unsuccessful, it defaults to the "again" statement, which makes the same consideration (of which the condition is now true), wrapping the control flow to the previously executed "IF".