Language Specification

This document is Plinth’s Language Specification, which documents each feature of the language in detail. If you find any omissions, please notify the author.

Note

Plinth is currently a work-in-progress. As such, parts of this specification are incomplete, missing, or not representative of the final language. New features will be added here once they are added to the reference implementation of the compiler.

• LALR(1) Grammar
  • Literals
  • Keywords
  • Symbols
• Source Files
  • Packages
  • Imports
  • Type Definitions
• Type Definitions
  • Resolving type names
  • Classes
  • Interfaces
  • Enums
  • Inheritance
  • Value types
• Members
  • Initialisers
  • Fields
  • Constructors
  • Methods
  • Properties
• Type System
  • Primitive Types
  • Array Types
  • Tuple Types
  • Class, Interface, and Enum Types
  • Value Types
  • Function Types
  • The object Type
  • Generic Type Parameters
  • Wildcard Type Parameters
• Initialisation
  • Static Blocks
  • Static Variable Assignments
  • Instance Blocks
  • Instance Variable Assignments
  • Constructors
  • Property Initialisation
• Exception Handling
  • Checked and Unchecked Exceptions
  • Exception Hierarchy
  • Try-catch-finally
• Parameters
  • Normal Parameters
  • Default Parameters
  • Auto-Assign Parameters
• Statements
  • Variable Declaration
  • Assignment
  • Block
  • Break
  • Continue
  • Delegate Constructor
  • Expression
  • For Loops
  • For Each Loops
  • If Statements
  • Increment and Decrement statements
  • Return Statements
  • Shorthand Assignments
  • Throw Statements
  • Try Statements
  • While Statements
• Expressions