Whitespace (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:38, 9 December 2021

Revision as of 04:21, 19 April 2022

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== Syntax ==

Commands are composed of sequences of spaces, tab stops and linefeeds. All other characters are ignored and thus can be used for comments. For example, tab-space-space-space performs arithmetic addition of the top two elements on the stack.

Data is represented in [[Binary code|binary]] using spaces (0) and tabs (1), followed by a linefeed; thus, tab-space-space-tab-space-tab-tab-linefeed is the binary number 1001011, which is 75 in decimal. All other characters are ignored and thus can be used for comments.

The sign of a number is given by its first character, [Space] for positive and [Tab] for negative.<ref name="whitespace" />

Code is written as an ''Instruction Modification Parameter'' (IMP) followed by the operation.<ref name="whitespace" /> The table below shows a list of all the IMPs in Whitespace.

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The "copy" and "slide" operations were added in Whitespace 0.3 and may not be supported by all implementations.<ref name="whitespace"/>

=== Numbers ===

Numbers are composed of spaces (0) and tabs (1), and they are terminated by a linefeed. The first space/tab in the number represents the sign of the number, if it's a space the number is positive, if it's a tab the number is negative. The rest of the trailing spaces and tabs represent the rest of the binary number.

==== Examples ====

space-tab-space-space-tab-space-tab-tab-linefeed (STSSTSTTL) represents the binary number 1001011 (positive, because the number starts with a space) => 75 in decimal.

tab-tab-tab-space-space-tab-space-linefeed (TTTSSTSL) represents the binary number 110010 (negative, because the number starts with a tab) => -50 in decimal.

=== Labels ===

Labels are simply [LF] terminated lists of spaces and tabs. There is only one global namespace so all labels must be unique.<ref name="whitespace"/>

==Sample code==