README.md

blc

blc is an implementation of the binary lambda calculus.

Binary lambda calculus basics

Binary lambda calculus (BLC) is a minimal, purely functional programming language based on a binary encoding of the untyped lambda calculus with De Bruijn indices.

Lambda terms have the following representation in BLC:

term	lambda	BLC
abstraction	λM	00M
application	MN	01MN
variable	i	1i0

Since BLC programs are basically lambda calculus terms, they can be applied to other terms. In order for them to be applicable to binary (but not BLC-encoded) input, it has to be lambda-encoded first. Bytestrings are lambda-encoded as single-pair lists of bytes and bytes are lambda-encoded as single-pair lists of lambda-encoded bits.

Bits 0 and 1 are lambda-encoded as Church booleans:

bit	lambda	BLC
0	λλ2 (true)	0000110
1	λλ1 (false)	000010

Example: BLC-encoding steps for a byte representing the ASCII/UTF-8 encoded letter 'a':

encoding	representation
decimal	96
binary	01100001
lambda	λ1(λλ2)(λ1(λλ1)(λ1(λλ1)(λ1(λλ2)(λ1(λλ2)(λ1(λλ2)(λ1(λλ2)(λ1(λλ1)(λλ1))))))))
BLC (hex)	16 16 0c 2c 10 b0 42 c1 85 83 0b 06 16 0c 2c 10 41 00

Documentation

Example BLC program

extern crate blc;
extern crate lambda_calculus;

use blc::*;
use blc::encoding::binary::to_bits;
use blc::execution::Input;
use lambda_calculus::{parse, DeBruijn};

fn repeat(input: &[u8]) -> String {
    let code_lambda = "λ1((λ11)(λλλλλ14(3(55)2)))1"; // the program (a lambda expression)
    let code_term   = parse(code_lambda, DeBruijn).unwrap();
    let code_blc    = to_bits(&code_term); // the program in binary lambda calculus

    run(&*code_blc, Input::Bytes(input)).unwrap()
}

fn main() {
    assert_eq!(
        repeat(&*b"hurr"),
        "hurrhurr"
    );
}