Zig Ruby Interpreter

A minimal Ruby interpreter written in Zig that can parse and execute basic Ruby code (work in progress).

Overview

This project implements a simple Ruby language interpreter in the Zig programming language. It includes a lexer, parser, and evaluator to process and run Ruby code.

⚠️ Note: This is an incomplete, experimental project under active development.

Features:

• Basic Ruby syntax parsing
• Support for numeric calculations and expressions
• Variable assignment and retrieval
• Function definitions and calls
• REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) interface
• WebAssembly build option for browser execution (in development)

Components

• Lexer (lexer.zig): Tokenizes the Ruby source code into a stream of tokens
• Parser (parser.zig): Converts tokens into an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
• AST (ast.zig): Defines the structure for representing Ruby code
• Evaluator (evaluator.zig): Executes the AST to produce results
• REPL (main.zig): Interactive command-line interface

Current Status

This interpreter is currently a work in progress. Here's what's working:

• Basic arithmetic operations
• Variable assignments
• Simple function definitions and calls
• REPL interface

What's being worked on:

• Improving function call handling
• WebAssembly compilation support
• Better error reporting
• More language features

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Zig compiler (tested with version 0.13.0)

Building

# Build the CLI REPL
zig build-exe src/main.zig

# Run the interpreter
./main

Usage

CLI REPL

Run the interpreter and enter Ruby code:

ruby> def add(x, y)
ruby:1> x + y
ruby:2> end
=> <function: add>
ruby> add(3, 4)
=> 7

License

This repo is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.