Inko: a brief introduction

Inko is a programming language I started working on in early 2015. The goal of the project is to create a gradually typed, object-oriented programming language with a focus on safety and concurrency. Inko draws inspiration from various other languages, such as Smalltalk, Erlang, Rust, and Ruby. Like any other language, it is not perfect but the more time I spend working on it, the more I believe it could turn out to be a useful programming language.

While the language is still quite far from being usable, I have been making a lot of progress with both the compiler and the standard library. As a result, I think it's time to start writing a bit more about the language, starting with a brief introduction of what Inko is all about.

Keep in mind that the exact syntax is subject to change and that some topics/features discussed in this article might not yet be available. In particular, large parts of the compiler's type system and syntax are being rewritten as part of the "Rewrite the Ruby compiler's type system" merge request.

Table of contents

History

The idea of building my own programming language dates to early 2013. Back then, I knew little about programming languages, parser, virtual machines, and so on. I also wasn't quite sure what I was looking for in this language. It wasn't until early 2015 that I started writing code for the project, starting with the virtual machine. It was also around this time that I started to have a better understanding of what I was looking for: a language with a strong object-oriented model and excellent support for concurrency, borrowing various features from languages I admire, such as Smalltalk and Erlang.

I ended up writing the virtual machine in Rust, though Rust wasn't my first choice. At the time Rust was still new and unstable, with both the syntax and functionality changing frequently. So I first looked into other languages such as C, C++, and D. While I made quite a bit of progress with using D, I felt that using a garbage collected language for a virtual machine was less than ideal. Ultimately I decided to go with Rust since it seemed to be the most suitable. At first, this was quite frustrating, but as Rust began settling in the frustration fortunately went away.

Today I'm quite happy with the choice of using Rust for the VM. Rust certainly has its flaws, but I find it much easier and much more pleasant to use than languages such as C/C++ and similar low-level programming languages.

Object model

Inko is a prototype-based object-oriented programming language, though the use of prototypes is mostly hidden from the user. Instead of inheritance, Inko uses composition using traits. I never really enjoyed the use of inheritance as I feel it couples objects too tightly, and composition through traits feels like the right answer to this problem. While Inko supports the creation of class-like objects using an object keyword, we simply call these "objects". This may seem odd but it helps clarify that these aren't traditional classes that support inheritance. For example, if we want to define a "Person" object of sorts, you could do so as follows in Ruby:

class Person def initialize ( name ) @name = name end end

The equivalent Inko code would be:

object Person { def init ( name : String ) { let @name = name } }

Here let @name = name defines an instance attribute called @name set to the value of the name argument, with the type of name being a String . If we wanted to use dynamic typing, we would simply leave out the type signature:

object Person { def init ( name ) { let @name = name } }

Message passing

Inko uses message passing for pretty much everything, including constructs such as "if" and "while"., allowing objects to decide how such constructs should behave, instead of the language dictating what evaluates to be true and false, for example. This means that instead of using an "if statement", you would use the "if" message.

Say you want to check if x is greater than 10. In Ruby (and many other programming languages) you may write such code as follows:

if x > 10 do_something else do_something_else end

In Inko we would instead write:

x > 10 . if true : { do_something }, false : { do_something_else }

Here if is a message sent to the result of x > 10 (this relies on some special syntax support so you don't have to write (x > 10).if ). true: and false: are simply keyword arguments sent to the if message, and the curly braces are closures. The object the if message is sent two determines which of the two closures is executed.

Methods can be defined using a def keyword, take an optional arguments list, and may specify the throw and return type:

def example ( argument : Type ) -> ReturnType { # ... }

If you leave out the argument types or the return type Inko will use a dynamic type instead:

def example ( argument : Type ) { # This method can return values of any type since its return type is inferred # as a dynamic type. }

Type system

Inko is a gradually typed programming language. Gradual typing gives you the benefits of a statically typed language while still allowing you to trade type safety for flexibility where necessary. Gradual typing is also useful when prototyping or when building a simple program that won't really benefit from static typing (e.g. a quick script to manage some music files).

To ensure type safety, Inko uses static typing by default, requiring you to opt-in to dynamic typing where desired. Using dynamic typing is straightforward: simply leave out the type signature in various places and Inko will treat the types as dynamic types.

Like any other reasonable statically typed language, Inko supports generics programming. For example, we can define a generic "List" type like so:

object List !( T ) { # ... }

Here !(T) defines the list of type parameters of the "List" type. The type parameter syntax is taken from D. While unusual it removes the need for additional syntax when explicitly passing type parameters with a message. For example, Rust uses <T> and requires you to write foo::<T>() when explicitly passing a type parameter as foo<T> would be parsed as (foo) < (T>) .

Using !(T) means that we can instead write foo!(T) , which is much easier on the fingers. Scala uses [] (e.g. List[T] ), and while easier to type (on QWERTY it doesn't require the use of the shift key) Inko isn't able to use this syntax because [] is a valid message name. For example: foo[10] translates to foo.[](10) .

Generics can be used in objects, traits, and methods. For example:

object Person { def == ( other : Self ) -> Boolean { # ... } }

Here other uses the "Self" type which tells the compiler that other is of the same type as the enclosing object ("Person" in this case).

Booleans and Nil

In many languages, the boolean values true and false are some kind of primitive value instead of a structure or object. In Inko, they are just regular objects like any other. The type Boolean in turn is just a trait implemented by the Boolean objects True and False .

The absence of a value can be indicated using a Nil . Nil is just a regular object like any other, but there's only one instance of this object. Nil is set up in such a way that any message sent to it returns Nil , except for a few messages that have a custom implementation. For example, Nil.foo would return Nil but Nil.to_integer would return 0 . This greatly simplifies code as we no longer need to constantly check if we're dealing with a value of type T or Nil , though of course we still can if necessary.

Optional types can be used to indicate that something can be either of type T or Nil . For example, to define an optional return value we would write:

def example -> ? Integer { Nil }

It is an error to pass a Nil to a regular type (e.g. String ), but it's perfectly fine to pass a Nil to an optional type (e.g. ?String ).

One example of where this is useful is when retrieving an array value by its index. Like Ruby, an array will return a Nil when there is no value for a given index. In Ruby, this means you may need to check what type of value you are dealing with, for example:

user = list_of_users [ 4 ] if user user . username else '' end

In Inko, we can instead write the following:

list_of_users [ 4 ]. username . to_string

Should list_of_users[4] return a Nil then sending username will produce another Nil . Sending to_string to Nil will produce an empty String since Nil defines its own implementation of this method.

In short, by having Nil return a new Nil for unknown messages we can greatly reduce the amount of code necessary to deal with values that might be absent (but we can still check for a Nil where necessary).

Error handling

Inko uses exceptions for error handling, drawing inspiration from an article titled "The Error Model" by Joe Duffy. The article is quite long but definitely worth the read.

I went with exception handling, since the happy path of the code should not be slowed down by error handling code. For example, when using a more functional approach, such as using a Result type, you always need to check what you're dealing with and "unwrap" the underlying value. When using exceptions, on the other hand, you just use the code as if it didn't throw an error, automatically jumping to a different region of code when it does.

Error handling principles

The basic principles of Inko's error handling system are that it should be clear when something throws, what it throws, and most important of all that code doesn't lie about any of this. To achieve this, Inko has a set of rules that must be followed when working with errors.

Method signatures must include the error type

A method that throws an error must include the error type in its signature. This can be done using the !! keyword in the method signature:

def foo !! SomeError { # ... }

This ensures that by just looking at the method (signature) we immediately know what errors we have to deal with.

A method that does not define an error type to throw can not throw. This means the following method would not compile:

def foo { throw 10 }

Only a single type can be thrown

A method can only throw an error of a single type, though you can specify the type to be a trait and throw any value that implements this trait. By restricting the number of possible types to just a single one we remove the need for having to catch many different error types. It also simplifies the syntax.

Methods that define a throw type must actually throw it

A method that specifies a type to throw must actually throw this type at some point, not doing so results in a compiler error. This means that the following method would not compile since it never throws a value:

def foo !! Integer -> Integer { 10 }

Sending a message that may throw requires explicit error handling

When sending a message that may throw, we must wrap the send in a try expression:

try foo

This makes it clear to the reader that foo may throw, without requiring them to first find the implementation of the method to figure this out.

By default, the try expression will just re-throw the error type, but you can explicitly handle the error by using an else expression:

try foo else ( error ) bar ( error )

Here we would run foo and if it succeeds, we'd return whatever foo returned. If foo threw an error, we'd run bar instead. Here the error variable would contain the object that was thrown. The type of error is inferred by the compiler.

The else expression supports multi-line expressions as well, which can be useful when your error handling logic is more complex:

try foo else ( error ) { bar ( error ) baz ( error ) }

Sometimes we just want to terminate the program if an operation failed. In this case, we can use try! instead of try :

try ! foo

The "try" keyword only supports a single expression

To prevent one from wrapping hundreds of lines of code in a single "try" expression, the syntax simply doesn't support this; instead you can only use a single expression with "try" expression. This means that the following code would produce a syntax error:

try { foo bar }

This however is perfectly fine:

try { foo }

Curly braces can still be used in case the expression doesn't fit on a single line, or it's simply more readable by using curly braces.

Bugs are not recoverable

Many languages that use exceptions make the mistake of using exceptions for errors caused by bugs. In Ruby, dividing by zero will result in a ZeroDivisionError error being thrown. Inko instead uses "panics". When a panic occurs, the virtual machine will print a stacktrace of the panicking process and terminate the entire program. This ensures that bugs are caught as early as possible, and more importantly can't be hidden by simply catching and ignoring the exception. Some examples of operations that may panic:

Dividing by zero. Formatting a time object using an incorrect string format. Trying to allocate memory when no system memory is available.

The general idea is fairly straightforward: if an error is the result of a bug or shouldn't happen then it should be a panic. If an error is likely to occur frequently (e.g. a network timeout) it should be an exception.

Concurrency

Inko's concurrency model is heavily inspired by Erlang. Instead of using OS threads directly Inko provides lightweight processes. These processes have their own heap and are garbage collected independently.

Communication between these processes happens through message passing, with the messages being deep copied. Certain permanent objects (e.g. modules) are allocated on a separate permanent heap and processes can access these objects without copying. While deep copying comes with a performance penalty (depending on the size of the data being copied) it ensures that a process can never refer to the memory of another process. This in turn ensures that the garbage collector only has to suspend the process that it has to garbage collect, instead of also having to suspend any processes that use this process' memory.

Processes use preemptive multitasking using a reduction system similar to Erlang. In short: every process has a number of "reductions" it can perform. Once this value reaches 0 the value is reset and the process is suspended. The virtual machine provides two thread pools for executing processes: one for regular processes, and one for processes that may perform blocking operations (e.g. reading from a file).

Inko provides the means to move a process between these two pools whenever necessary. This means that when performing a blocking operation we don't need to spawn a separate process in a separate thread pool, instead we just move our process from one pool to another; moving it back once our blocking operation has been completed.

Sending and receiving messages uses dynamic typing as Inko's type system can not be used to specify the types of messages a process may support. To work around this Inko will eventually support a type-safe API. The exact semantics are not yet defined, but if you're curious you can read more about this in the issue "Type safe actor API".

Memory management

Inko is a garbage collected language. The garbage collector is a parallel, generational garbage collector based on Immix. Fun fact: to the best of my knowledge Inko's garbage collector is the only full implementation of Immix apart from the one provided by JikesRVM. There are a few other implementations of Immix, but the ones that I know of typically don't implement evacuation or other parts of Immix.

The garbage collector can collect process independently, though a process will be suspended during garbage collection. The collector being parallel means it will use multiple threads to garbage collect the memory of a process.

How well the garbage collector performs is hard to say as I have only run a few basic benchmarks. These benchmarks usually involved garbage collecting a few million objects and from the top of my head this would usually only take a few milliseconds. Once Inko matures a bit more I'll most likely spend more time writing (and publishing) benchmarks.

Portable bytecode

The bytecode of the virtual machine is portable between CPU architectures and operating systems. This means that bytecode compiled on a 64 bits CPU can be run on a 32 bits CPU. This may seem like a minor feature but it makes it easier to distribute bytecode files as you no longer need to compile your program for every architecture.

In the future Inko may support a way of bundling such bytecode files similar to JAR, though this isn't supported at the moment.

Examples

With all of that out of the way let's take a look at some examples of Inko source code. The examples discussed below are all taken from the standard library, which can be found here.

Checking if a String starts with another String

Checking if one String starts with another String can be done using the method String#starts_with? in the std::string module. The implementation of this method is pretty straightforward:

def starts_with? ( prefix : String ) -> Boolean { prefix . length > length . if_true { return False } slice ( 0 , prefix . length ) == prefix }

The argument prefix is the String we are looking for, and our return value is a Boolean . In the method we start with the following:

prefix . length > length . if_true { return False }

This is a simple optimisation: if the String we are looking for is greater than the String we are checking then we can just return False right away ("hello" can never start with "hello world" for example). In Ruby you would write this as follows:

if prefix . length > length return false end # Alternatively: return false if prefix . length > length

Next up we have the actual comparison:

slice ( 0 , prefix . length ) == prefix

This operation is pretty straightforward: first we generate a new String starting at character 0 and include prefix.length characters. We then simply check if this equals the given prefix String . Note that string slicing operates on characters, not bytes.

Loops and tail call elimination

Loops are created using closures, instead of using a special while or loop keyword. A loop using a conditional is created by sending while_true or while_false to a closure:

let mut number = 0 { number < 10 }. while_true { number += 1 }

Here we create a loop that runs as long as the result of the closure { number < 10 } evaluates to true. As long as this is the case we execute the closure passed to the while_true message.

An infinite loop is created by sending loop to a closure:

{ # This will run forever }. loop

The while_true method is implemented as follows:

def while_true ( block : do ) -> Nil { call . if_false { return } block . call while_true ( block ) }

Let's start with the signature. This method takes one argument block , which has its type set to do . In this context do is used to specify that we expect a closure with no arguments and a dynamic return type. If we required an argument we would instead write do (Integer) . If we wanted to also include a return type we could write do (Integer) -> Integer . We can also use the lambda keyword to create a lambda. The difference between the two is simple: a closure can capture outer local variables, a lambda can not. When the type signature requires a closure you can also pass a lambda, but not the other way around. Closures and lambdas are collectively referred to as "blocks".

Now let's look at the body of this method:

call . if_false { return } block . call while_true ( block )

First we run the receiving block, returning early if it returned something that evaluates to false. If it evaluates to true we'll simply execute the block passed in the block argument, then we will call ourselves again. Inko supports tail call elimination so we can simply keep calling while_true indefinitely without blowing up the call stack.

The loop method is a simple method that also relies on tail call elimination:

def loop -> Nil { call loop }

Here call will run the receiving block, then we simply recurse into loop to repeat this process.

Because Inko uses preemptive multitasking, loops such as those shown above will never block an OS thread indefinitely. Instead, the virtual machine will suspend the process once it has consumed all of its reductions, resuming execution of the process some time later.

Processes and communication

To start a process, we first need to import the std::process module like so:

import std :: process

Next we can start a process like so:

import std :: process let pid = process . spawn { # This runs in a separate process }

We can send messages to a process using process.send and receive them using process.receive :

import std :: process let pid = process . spawn { process . receive # This would produce 'hello' } process . send ( pid , 'hello' )

When using process.receive without any messages being available the process will be suspended until a new message arrives.

File operations

For our last example, we'll look at a simple file operation: reading a file. In a typical language, you would open the file with a specific mode, then read from it. For example, in Ruby you would do the following:

file = File . open ( 'example.txt' , 'r' ) file . read

Many languages will use the same data types for files opened in different file modes. This means that the following Ruby code would compile, but produce a runtime error (since the file is not opened for writing):

file = File . open ( 'example.txt' , 'r' ) file . write ( 'hello' )

Inko uses different types for files opened in different modes. For example, a file opened in read-only mode is a ReadOnlyFile while a file opened in write-only mode is a WriteOnlyFile . This means our first example is written as follows:

import std :: fs :: file let file = file . read_only ( 'example.txt' ) try ! file . read # This will terminate the program if we couldn't read the data

Our second example would be as follows:

import std :: fs :: file let file = file . read_only ( 'example.txt' ) try ! file . write ( 'hello' )

This code however will not compile since a ReadOnlyFile does not respond to the write message. I really like this API because it's straightforward to implement and removes the need for having to worry about using the wrong file mode for your operations.

Trying it out

If you're curious about Inko, you can give it a try yourself, but keep in mind that with Inko being a young language this process is a bit painful.

To try things out you need to have three things installed:

Ruby 2.4 or newer. Bundler ( gem install bundler ). Rust 1.10 or newer using a nightly build (stable Rust is unfortunately not supported at the moment).

Once these requirements are met you can clone the Git repository:

git clone git@gitlab.com:inko-lang/inko.git cd inko

To build the compiler, you need to run:

cd compiler bundle install

To build the virtual machine, you need to run (from the root directory):

cd vm make release

Once done you can compile a program (from the root directory) as follows:

./compiler/bin/inkoc /tmp/test.inko -i ./runtime/ -t /tmp/inkoc-build

This will compile the program located at /tmp/test.inko and store all the bytecode files in /tmp/inkoc-build . Once compiled the compiler will print the file path of the bytecode file that belongs to the input file ( /tmp/test.inko in this case).

To run your program you start the VM as follows:

./vm/target/release/ivm \ -I /tmp/inkoc-build \ /tmp/inkoc-build/path/to/bytecode.inkoc

These two commands can be merged into a single one as follows:

./vm/target/release/ivm \ -I /tmp/inkoc-build \ $( ./compiler/bin/inkoc /tmp/test.inko -i ./runtime/ )

Of course this is far from ideal and in the future this will be greatly simplified, but for now running a program sadly requires some additional work.

In the future I will be writing more about Inko's internals such as the garbage collector and the allocator. If you want to stay up to date on the latest Inko news the easiest ways of doing so are: