Creating a simple stack-based language in Clojure

Apr 4, 2016

Let’s look at how to build a simple stack-based language in Clojure. First, this is how the input would look like:

push 8
push 4
+
push 3
*

This would be equivalent to (in infix notation):

(8 + 4) * 3

Here is a simple parser-cum-evaluator for the above input:

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(defn parse-eval [string stack]
  "Parse and Evaluate the line sent and push result to stack if necessary."
  (let [cmd (clojure.string/split string #" ")
        fname (first cmd)
        arg (second cmd)
        digit? #(Character/isDigit (first %))
        op? #(some (fn [x] (= x %)) ["+" "-" "*" "/"])
        make-fn #(resolve (symbol %))]
    (if (and (nil? arg) (op? fname))
      ;; If operator, apply it to arguments in stack
      (conj (drop 2 stack) (apply (make-fn fname) (take 2 stack)))
      (if (and (= (keyword fname) :push) (digit? arg))
        ;; If push command, add value to stack
        (conj stack (Integer/parseInt arg))
        (throw (Exception. "Error while parsing"))))))

Now we need to read the program mentioned above from a file and send it to the above function:

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(defn read-prog [filename]
  (let [data (slurp filename)]
    (loop [lines (clojure.string/split-lines data) stack []]
      (if (empty? lines)
        stack
        (recur (rest lines) (reader (first lines) stack))))))

This returns the stack containing the result of the expression.