blackroad/roadc

RoadC

A programming language with Python-style indentation, built from scratch. Two implementations: a tree-walking interpreter in Python, and a zero-dependency C99 compiler.

What Works Today

The Python interpreter supports:

• Variables: let, var, const with optional type annotations
• Functions: fun keyword, parameters, return, recursion, closures
• Control flow: if/elif/else, while, for/in, break, continue
• Types: integers, floats, strings (with {var} interpolation), booleans, colors (#FF1D6C)
• Collections: lists, dicts, sets, tuples, ranges
• Operators: arithmetic, comparison, logical, bitwise, compound assignment
• Builtins: print, len, range, str, int, abs, min, max, sorted, input, and more
• Member access: string/list/dict methods (.upper(), .append(), .keys())

fun fibonacci(n):
    if n <= 1:
        return n
    return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)

let result = fibonacci(10)
print(result)  # 55

let name = "world"
let msg = "hello {name}"
print(msg)  # hello world

let xs = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
let total = 0
for x in xs:
    total += x
print(total)  # 15

Architecture

source.road
    |
    v
  Lexer (lexer.py, 462 LOC)
    |  Tokens: keywords, literals, operators, INDENT/DEDENT
    v
  Parser (parser.py, 826 LOC)
    |  AST nodes defined in ast_nodes.py (462 LOC)
    v
  Interpreter (interpreter.py, 320 LOC)
       Tree-walking execution with Environment chain

The C compiler (roadc.c, 618 LOC) is a separate implementation that compiles .road files to native executables. Zero external dependencies — just a C99 compiler.

gcc -std=c99 -O2 -o roadc roadc.c
./roadc program.road

Development

# Run a .road file
python roadc.py examples/fibonacci.road

# Run tests (30+ tests)
pytest tests/ -v

# Build C compiler
gcc -std=c99 -O2 -o roadc roadc.c

# Start REPL
python roadc.py

Roadmap

• Type checker (static analysis pass between parser and interpreter)
• Bytecode VM (replace tree-walking for performance)
• Standard library (file I/O, math, networking)
• 3D scene graph (space, cube, sphere keywords — lexer ready, runtime not yet)
• Package manager
• Self-hosting compiler

License

Proprietary — BlackRoad OS, Inc.

Related Projects

Project	Description
RoadC Playground	Interactive browser IDE for RoadC
Universal Computer	Turing machine simulator
Quantum Math Lab	Mathematical computation toolkit