This is a simple interpreter that can evaluate basic scheme expressions.

Currently the following expressions exist: lambdas, function calls, variables, if, set!, numeric literals. The library has a few simple arithmetic functions bounded. Proper lambdas seem to work (now really, after I've fixed envfind), except that varargs are not supported.

Most library functions and types like lists and vectors are missing. There's also no type distinctness or quote. These, however, could be easy to implement. Macros would be harder, but also possible; though some derived expression types could be coded directly in J. Call/cc would be impossible to implement this way, and a garbage collector would be very difficult as well.

The interpreter has the following parts. The tok verb splits a scheme code string to tokens, but doesn't actually decode those tokens. The rdr verb reads a scheme code string to a tree, but the leafs of the tree are still the undecoded tokens. The placmak, placref, and placset functions create, get, and set the contents of mutable cells: these cells are used to implement set!. The cells are indexed by integers, and are never destroyed, so we don't have garbage-collection. The run verb runs a scheme source tree (returned by rdr) in an environment. The environment is a rank 2 array whose first column contains the boxed names of variables in the environment, and second column has the boxed indices of the cell in the cell vector that will always contain the contents of that variable. This function dispatches to one of the six functions runnum, runsym, runset, runcall, runif, runlambda depending on the type of the expression. Scheme procedures are represented as J gerunds of monadic functions that accept a list of boxed scheme arguments as its argument. The lambda verb creates such a function from the environment and the function body.

NB. interpreter experiment in J by zsban NB. tokenizer and reader spcp =: e.&(9 10 11 12 13 32{a.) tok1 =: (((~:1&|.)@:spcp+.(+.1&|.)@:(e.&'()'))<;.2]) tok =: ((#~-.@:spcp@:{.@:>"0)@:tok1@:(,&' ')) ::[: rdrc =: ('()'i.{.@:>) rdrs =: rdrb`rdre`rdra@.(rdrc@:{.) rdrb =: (<@:}: , rdrs@:>@:{:) @: rdrs@:}. rdre =: <@:}. rdra =: {. , rdrs@:}. rdr1 =: {.@:rdrs@:(,&(<')')) rdr =: (rdr1 @: tok) ::[: NB.echo rdr '(lambda (x) (+ 1 (* x x) x))' NB. mutable places placv =: i.0 placmak =: 3 :'<:#placv=:placv,<y' placref =: 3 :'>y{placv' placset =: 4 :'0:placv=:(<y) x}placv' NB. default environment denv =: i.0 2 denvadd =: 4 :'0:denv=:denv,(,x);placmak y' '+' denvadd +/@:>`'' '-' denvadd ({.-+/@:}.)`(-@:{.)@.(1=#)@:>`'' '*' denvadd */@:>`'' '/' denvadd ({.%*/@:}.)`(%@:{.)@.(1=#)@:>`'' 'floor' denvadd <.@:{.@:>`'' 'exp' denvadd ^@:{.@:>`'' 'log' denvadd ^.@:{.@:>`'' '<' denvadd ([:*./2</\])@:>`'' '=' denvadd ([:*./2=/\])@:>`'' '<=' denvadd ([:*./2<:/\])@:>`'' 'not' denvadd -.@:{.@:>`'' 'g0' denvadd 0 NB. evaluator runl =: [ <@:run"_ 0 >@:] envfind =: ([:>[:{:[{~{."1@:[i:]) match =: ([ , <@:placmak@:>@:])"0 lambda1 =: 2 :'>@:{: (u , (>@:{.v)match y) runl (<@:}.v)' NB.lambda1 =: 2 :'(u , (>@:{.v)match y) ; (<@:}.v) ; 9' lambda =: 4 :'(x lambda1 y)`(i.0)' runnum =: {.@:,@:(_.&".)@:>@:] runsym =: placref @: envfind runset =: [: 0: ([envfind 1{>@:]) placset ([run 2{>@:]) runcall =: [: (>@:{. 4 :'x@.0 y' }.) runl runif =: [ run ([:-.[run 1{>@:]) { ((<'0'),~2}.>@:]) runlambda =: [ lambda }.@:>@:] keywd =: ('lambda';'if';'set!')&i. runo =: runlambda`runif`runset`runcall@.(keywd@:{.@:>@:]) runa =: runsym`runnum@.(((e.&'0123456789+-'@:{.@:>)>(e.&(+`-)))@:]) run =: runo`runa@.(1=L.@:]) NB. putting it together eval =: denv&run @: rdr ::[: echo eval 0 :0 (((lambda (fact) (set! fact (lambda (n) (if (< n 1) 1 (* n (fact (- n 1)))))) fact) 0) 5) ) echo eval '((lambda (a) ((lambda (a) a) 2)) 5)' NB. must give 2 NB. END

Tangentstorm has some notes about this code at http://tangentstorm.github.io/apljk/bjonas-scheme.ijs.html