Ki v3

Ki is a low-level programming language written from scratch. It's completely independent from libc by using its own self-hosted libraries, and independent from llvm by using a custom backend. It aims to be a fun, non-production improvement on C.

Warning

Ki is still in early development, expect breaking bugs and missing features.

Notable Features

• Modules
• Default values
• Inferred types
• Decorators
• Builtin strings
• Builtin markdown generator
• Builtin IR string representation generator
• Blazingly-fast compile times

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/notjoshki/ki-v3.git
$ cd ki-v3
$ sudo make install

Examples

Hello world:

main() {
    print("Hello, world!\n");
}

Print the alphabet in ascending order:

main() {
    for character := 'A'..='Z' {
        print_char(character);
    }

    print("\n");
}

Greet the user:

main() {
    name := input("What is your name? ");
    print_format("Hello, %\n", name);
    delete_string(name);
}

You can find more advanced examples here, or see the compiler tests.

Usage

ki <command> [options...] <file>

Command	Description
build	Produce an executable
document	Produce a markdown file
ir	Produce an IR file
object	Produce an object file
source	Produce an assembly file

Option	Description
--help	Show this information
--version	Show the compiler version
-as-flags <...>	Specify flags to pass during assembling
-doc-exported	Show only exported symbols in documentation
-freestanding	Don't use the standard library or initialize the heap
-g	Build with debugging information
-ir-explicit	Generate IR in explicit form
-ld <path>	Specify the linker to use in compilation
-ld-flags <...>	Specify flags to pass during linkage
-o <name>	Specify the output filename
-ro-strings	Disable auto-allocated string constants
-source-libs	Show library externs in assembly source code
-unopt	Disable optimization

License

Ki is distributed under the BSD 3-Clause license.