Express

Express is an fresh new scripting language designed as a companion for Free Pascal. It takes a lot of syntactic inspiration from Pascal but drops a lot of the verbosity. It's indentation-based, statically typed, and aims to be fast enough for real workloads.

Still a work in progress. Things are moving quickly.

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Syntax

Express uses indentation to define blocks, similar to Python. No begin/end required, no semicolons. If you know Pascal the structure will feel familiar, just cleaner.

func Greet(name: String)
  var msg := 'Hello, ' + name
  print msg

As a bonus an experimental Pascal parser exist, capable of parsing a subset of object-pascal.

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Performance

The interpreter is reasonably fast on its own, and there are two JIT tiers available via annotations. The first tier copies native machine code to avoid dispatch overhead for x86 and x86-64

The second is an experimental x86-64 JIT that can produce faster native machinecode.

In practice, tight numeric loops with JIT enables run up to several times faster than many alternative scripting engines.

However, even without JIT, the runtime is still comparable to for example JVM interpreted mode.

You can control JIT behavior per-function, and per-loop max, low, off:

@jit('max')
func HeavyWork(n: Int)
  // ...

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Features

• Static typing with integers, floats, strings, booleans, enums, arrays, records and classes
• Single-inheritance classes with virtual dispatch and inherited calls
• if/elif/else, for, while, repeat..until, break, continue
• Typed exceptions via try/except on E: SomeType do
• Extension methods - attach new methods to any type including built-in arrays
• Reference counting for strings, arrays and class instances
• Module imports with import 'path' as Alias
• Pointers, addr(), pointer indexing and dereferencing
• Destructuring assignment from records: (x, y) := myPoint
• Anonymous functions and closures
• Operator overloading operator := (x: Int; y:TMyClass)
• Familiar generics func Swap<T>(ref x,y: T)
• Foreign function interface (FFI)
• Simple embedding API for FPC host applications
• And much more that you are used to from Pascal.

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Examples

Classes and inheritance

Methods default to being type methods, annotations are used to describe intent.

type TAnimal = class
  var name: String

  constructor Create(aName: String)
    self.name := aName

  @virtual
  func Speak()
    print self.name + ' makes a sound.'

type TCat = class(TAnimal)
  @override
  func Speak()
    print self.name + ' says Meow!'

var pet: TAnimal := new TCat('Misty')
pet.Speak() // Misty says Meow!

Exception handling

type EMyError = class(Exception)

try
  raise EMyError('Something went wrong!')
except on E: EMyError do
  print 'Caught: ' + E.Message
except
  print 'Something else happened'

Extension methods

You can add methods to any type, including built-in arrays.

type TIntArray = array of Int64

@jit
func TIntArray.Sum(): Int64
  for ref item in self do
    Result += item

var nums: TIntArray
nums.SetLen(3)
nums[0] := 10
nums[1] := 20
nums[2] := 70

print nums.Sum().ToStr() // 100

FFI

FFI allows you to load libraries and get system callbacks.

@native('kernel32.dll::GetTickCount')
func TickCount(): Int32; stdcall;

print TickCount();

// Enum windows
@native('user32.dll::EnumWindows')
func EnumWindows(lpEnumFunc: Int64; lParam: Int64): Int32

var count := 0
var cb := create_callback(
  lambda(hwnd: Int64; lParam: Int64): Int32
    count += 1
    return 1
)

EnumWindows(cb, 0)
free_callback(cb) // manually managed instance for now

print 'EnumWindows found {$count} windows'

Records and destructuring

func GetPoint(): (x, y: Int)
  Result := [100, 200]

var (px, py) := GetPoint()
print px.ToStr() + ', ' + py.ToStr() // 100, 200

Pointers

var x: Int32 := 42
var p: ^Int32 := addr(x)

p^ := 100
print x.ToStr() // 100

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Embedding in FPC

TExpress wraps everything up. You can pass variables in from FPC, read them back after the script runs, and register native FPC functions the script can call.

uses xpr.Express;

var
  Script: TExpress;
  MyVar: Int32 = 10;
begin
  Script := TExpress.Create;
  try
    Script.Bind.AddVar('SharedVar', @MyVar, Script.Context.GetType(xtInt32));
    Script.RunCode('SharedVar := SharedVar + 5');
    WriteLn(MyVar); // 15
  finally
    Script.Free;
  end;
end.

Global variables written by the script can be read back with Script.GetVar('name'). Keep in mind arrays and strings are freed when the script context is destroyed, but this can be delayed.

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What's missing

• Tested and reviewed unicode strings
• Memory managment may still have edge cases
• JIT for x86-64 may have edgecases