lil is a small programming language you can either interpret or compile to a standalone binary.

setup

git clone https://github.com/XLRC888/lil.git
cd lil
./install.sh

this builds lil.c with gcc and installs to ~/.local/bin/lil. make sure that directory is in your PATH. or just run make and use ./lil directly.

no external dependencies. just need gcc or any c99 compiler.

usage

lil file.lil          # run a script
lil                   # interactive repl
lil -c file.lil       # compile to standalone binary
lil -c file.lil -o myprog  # compile with custom output name

performance

benchmark	python3	lil (vm)	lil (aot)	C
loop 50M	3.38s	0.56s	0.05s	0.05s
primes 5k	0.13s	0.05s	0.005s	0.004s
strcat 1M	0.14s	0.14s	0.13s	0.01s

documentation

the lil book is available at https://xlrc888.github.io/lil/ source is in the book/ directory.

lil vm beats python on compute. compiled output matches C on simple loops.