Salem

Salem is the Sal Execution Model. It is a Zig implementation of the Sal programming language.

Data model

• Basic data types:

  • RRB-Trees for arrays and byte arrays
  • B-Trees, for dictionaries, sets and multisets
  • Pairs and Variables
  • Primitive and constructed functions
  • A very minimal object system (needed for efficient mutual recursion)
  • Promises for lazy evaluation

• Numeric tower:

  • Fixnums
  • Arbitrary precision integers
  • Ratios
  • Complex numbers and quaternions (restricted to rational coefficients)
  • Multisets (we will treat numbers as a proper subtype of multisets)
  • We are explicitly not supporting IEEE 754 Floats, but we may at some point support Posits

Inspirations

• Clojure
• John Shutt's Kernel and Vau Calculus
• Racket
• colorForth
• RetroForth
• Joy
• Factor
• Mercury
• Lua
• Erlang
• Haskell
• Zig
• Roc