alex’s blog

Introduction to Pharen

Pharen is a compiler that takes a Lisp-like language and turns it into PHP code. This combines Lisp’s advantages of uniform syntax and homoiconicity (among others) and PHP’s advantage of…being everywhere. Here’s some sample Pharen and the equivalent PHP:

(fn greet-person (name) (. "Hello " name "!"))  (echo (greet-person "visitor"))

<?php function greet_person($name){ return "Hello " . $name . "!"; }  echo greet_person("visitor"); ?>

This shows some of the differences between the two languages. Variables don’t need the $ prefix, hyphens in names for functions (and variables) are converted to underscores, everything, including string concatenation, looks like a function call, and most things are expressions. The last one means that a function will automatically return the last evaluated expression inside it. More will be explained in later sections.

Some of the rationale behind Pharen:

1. Abstract out problems and irregularities in PHP’s own parser and the language itself.
2. Compile more sophisticated features, such as closures and macros, to native PHP.
3. Insanity.

i can’t believe it. there is something like this. it is just too weird.. heck i might want to try this..