Factor (programming Language)

Factor is a stack-oriented programming language created by Slava Pestov. Factor is dynamically typed and has automatic memory management, as well as powerful metaprogramming features. The language has a single implementation featuring a self-hosted optimizing compiler and an interactive development environment. The Factor distribution includes a large standard library.

History

Slava Pestov created Factor in 2003 as a scripting language for a video game. The initial implementation, now referred to as JFactor, was implemented in Java and ran on the Java Virtual Machine. Though the early language resembled modern Factor superficially in terms of syntax, the modern language is very different in practical terms and the current implementation is much faster.

The language has changed significantly over time. Originally, Factor programs centered on manipulating Java objects with Java's reflection capabilities. From the beginning, the design philosophy has been to modify the language to suit programs written in it. As the Factor implementation and standard libraries grew more detailed, the need for certain language features became clear, and they were added. JFactor did not have an object system where the programmer could define their own classes, and early versions of native Factor were the same; the language was similar to Scheme in this way. Today, the object system is a central part of Factor. Other important language features such as tuple classes, combinator inlining, macros, user-defined parsing words and the modern vocabulary system were only added in a piecemeal fashion as their utility became clear.

The foreign function interface was present from very early versions to Factor, and an analogous system existed in JFactor. This was chosen over creating a plugin to the C part of the implementation for each external library that Factor should communicate with, and has the benefit of being more declarative, faster to compile and easier to write.

The Java implementation initially consisted of just an interpreter, but a compiler to Java bytecode was later added. This compiler only worked on certain procedures. The Java version of Factor was replaced by a version written in C and Factor. Initially, this consisted of just an interpreter, but the interpreter was replaced by two compilers, used in different situations. Over time, the Factor implementation has grown significantly faster.

Description

Factor is a dynamically typed, functional and object-oriented programming language. Code is structured around small procedures, called words. In typical code, these are 1–3 lines long, and a procedure more than 7 lines long is very rare. Something that would idiomatically be expressed with one procedure in another programming language would be written as several words in Factor.

Each word takes a fixed number of arguments and has a fixed number of return values. Arguments to words are passed on a data stack, using reverse Polish notation. The stack is used just to organize calls to words, and not as a datastructure. The stack in Factor is used in a similar way to the stack in Forth; for this, they are both considered stack languages. For example, below is a snippet of code that prints out "hello world" to the current output stream:
"hello world" print
print is a word in the io vocabulary that takes a string from the stack and returns nothing. It prints the string to the current output stream (by default, the terminal or the graphical listener).

The factorial function $n!$ can be implemented in Factor in the following way:

: factorial ( n -- n! ) dup 1 > [1,bproduct ">[1,b.html" ;"title="[1,b">[1,bproduct [ drop 1 ">,b.html"_;"title="[1,b">[1,b<_a>product_.html" ;"title="[1,b.html" ;"title="[1,b">[1,bproduct ">[1,bproduct [ drop 1 if ;

Not all data has to be passed around only with the stack. Lexical scoping">Lexically scoped local variables let one store and access temporaries used within a procedure. Dynamically scoped variables are used to pass things between procedure calls without using the stack. For example, the current input and output streams are stored in dynamically scoped variables.

Factor emphasizes flexibility and the ability to extend the language. There is a system for macros, as well as for arbitrary extension of Factor syntax. Factor's syntax is often extended to allow for new types of word definitions and new types of literal (computer science)">literal