Summary
There is now a downloadable interpreter with source for the Cat programming language written in C#.

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Cat is a stack based functional language inspired by the Joy programming language Like Joy, Cat is a cross between Forth and the FP language.

A prototype Cat interpreter, has been released into the public domain, and is available for download with C# source code at http://www.cdiggins.com/cat.zip.

Characteristics of Cat

Cat has no variables, no arguments, no constants, and no side-effects. Every Cat program takes a single stack as input, and returns a single stack as output. A Cat program is made up of a sequence of sub-programs. A sub-program may be user-defined or atomic programs.

A Nip of Cat

In Cat every operation, program, and literal, is a stack transform function. It takes a stack and returns a new stack. The following are examples of Cat programs:

    42; // pushes 42 onto the stack
    1 2; // pushes the value 1 and then the value 2 onto the stack
    1 2 swap; // pushes 2 and then 1 onto the stack.
    1 2 +; // pushes 3 onto the stack
    1 + 2; // increments the top value of the stack, then pushes 2 onto the stack
    pop; // removes the top item of the stack
    dup; // duplicates the top item on the stack
    [1 2 3]; // pushes a list of functions onto the stack
    [1 2 3] $; // pushes a list of values onto the stack
    [] 1 cons; // pushes a list containing the "1" function
  

There is a more detailed introduction to Cat available here.

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About the Blogger

Christopher Diggins is a software developer and freelance writer. Christopher loves programming, but is eternally frustrated by the shortcomings of modern programming languages. As would any reasonable person in his shoes, he decided to quit his day job to write his own ( www.heron-language.com ). Christopher is the co-author of the C++ Cookbook from O'Reilly. Christopher can be reached through his home page at www.cdiggins.com.