A wolf in sheep’s clothing¶ ↑

PrettyScript is JavaScript that looks like Ruby. It’s parsed as Ruby and then translated to JS using a set of rules. PrettyScript tries to preserve JS semantics while taking advantage of Ruby’s syntactic sugar. It should be obvious to the programmer what JavaScript will be generated by any particular piece of PrettyScript.

That said, PrettyScript uses black magic to bring a few of Ruby’s basic language features to JavaScript, like blocks and implicit returns. Future plans include a modular transform system, so that further magical transformations, perhaps contributed by others, can be enabled and disabled per-use.

UPDATE¶ ↑

I’m exploring the idea of making minor modifications to the Ruby grammar. This will, for example, let me easily solve the $ problem by just getting rid of gvars and making $ valid in idents. I can’t think of any benefits to retaining syntax compatibility with Ruby since the semantics are already radically different.

Example¶ ↑

Ruby                                   JavaScript

def foo a,b                            function foo(a,b) {
  bar :x => a, :y => b do |z|            return bar({"x":a,"y":b},function(z) {
    this.donk()                            this.donk();
    Woot.dingus                            Woot.dingus;
    if z                                   if (z)
      Bloop 123                              return Bloop(123);
    else                                   else
      this.bleep = $zing                     return this.bleep=$zing;});}
    end
  end
end

Notice a few things:

• Lines are synchronized and the output is properly indented. PrettyScript aims to have entirely readable output.

• Blocks are translated to anonymous functions (yay!)

• Statements in tail position are automatically returned, even within control structures. Because not all JavaScript statements have a value, this will sometimes fail, but the eventual goal is to allow everything in PrettyScript to be used as an expression, just like with Ruby.

• Nothing special is done with return scope, so return in a block just exits the block. This may be changed down the road.

• Constants are treated as normal identifiers, just like methods (but the parser treats them a bit differently, so be careful).

• Woot.dingus is not a call in JS, it’s just a property reference. Ruby method calls are translated to JS function calls if they have arguments or if the call is parenthesized e.g. foo(), otherwise they become variable/property references.

• this is used instead of self. PrettyScript tries to look like JS when it otherwise doesn’t matter. This also avoids name collisions.

• Ruby global variables become normal JS variables, because JS allows the $ character in identifiers. However, something like foo.$bar, which is valid in JS, will not parse in Ruby. I haven’t figured out a solution to this yet.

There are many subleties to the translation, which will eventually be documented in detail, but for now you’ll have to experiment.

Usage¶ ↑

PrettyScript depends on ripper2ruby by Sven Fuchs: github.com/svenfuchs/ripper2ruby/

PrettyScript adds the to_js method to node classes from ripper2ruby:

Ruby.from_ruby('def lol; end').to_js

Future development will include a proper command line tool, translation of code embedded in HTML, and other wonderful features.

TODO¶ ↑

• There is currently no way to declare local variables. Obviously, this is top priority. I’ll probably do it the same way Ruby does, by looking for assignments to unqualified names and creating the variable implicitly.

• Once that is done, I’ll need to come up with a way to assign to globals.

• Do something with class and module declarations. This will probably be flexible so you can plug in your object protocol of choice.

• Multiple rescue clauses, filter by exception type, rescue for def

• Make all statements usable as expressions

• Refactor refactor refactor! Use visitor pattern. Clean up this mess.

• Multiple assignment

• Do something about $ in identifiers. Modifying the Ruby grammar is one possibility.

• Support splat parameter/argument

• Support block parameters and yield