<article>
    <h2>Welcome to the <em>hex</em> programming language</h2>
    <p><strong>hex</strong> is a tiny, minimalist, concatenative, stack-based and slightly-esoteric programming language
        that can run on many platforms (including <a href="/play">modern browsers</a>) and can be used as an embedded
        language, to create shell scripts, or simply to learn more about concatenative programming.</p>
    <p>Its syntax is heavily inspired by the <a href="https://min-lang.org" target="_blank">min</a> programming
        language, and features
        space-separated tokens, no unnecessary punctuation characters, and round brackets to delimit lists.</p>
    <h3>Features</h3>
    <ul>
        <li>Support <strong>32bit integers</strong>, <em>written only in hexadecimal format</em>, both positive and
            negative (represented via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two%27s_complement" target="_blank">two's
                complement</a>),
            <strong>strings</strong>, and <strong>quotations</strong> (lists).
        </li>
        <li><strong>64 native symbols</strong> implementing simple arithmetic, boolean logic, bitwise operations,
            comparison of integers, read/write from/to stdin/stdout/stderr, read and write files, execute external
            processes, work with quotations and strings, create and delete user symbols (variables), error handling, and
            manipulate the stack.</li>
        <li>Fully <strong>homoiconic</strong> (everything is data).</li>
        <li>Implements a simple <strong>virtual machine</strong> with a bytecode compiler and interpreter.</li>
        <li>Includes a simple <strong>REPL</strong>.</li>
        <li>Includes an integrated <strong>help system</strong>.</li>
        <li>Distributable through <strong>one single, amalgamated C file</strong>, making it easier to embed in other programs and port to
            different platforms.</li>
    </ul>
    <h3>Example</h3>
    <p> The following code executes the <em>ls</em> command, retrieves the files returned in standard output, and stores
        them
        inside a quotation that is then printed:</p>
    <pre><code>$"ls"$$ $:run$$ $0x1$$ $:get$$ $"&bsol;n"$$ $:split$$ $:puts$$</code></pre>
    <p>Note that <strong>no variable is used in the code above</strong>! Let's break it down:</p>
    <ul>
        <li>The string <code>"ls"</code> is pushed on the stack.</li>
        <li>The {{sym-run}} symbol is executed, which runs the command <code>ls</code> and pushes quotation on the
            stack
            containing three elements: the return code of the program, its standard output, and its standard error.</li>
        <li>The integer <code>0x1</code> is pushed on the stack.</li>
        <li>The {{sym-get}} symbol is executed, which retrieves the second element of the quotation (the standard
            output).</li>
        <li>The string <code>"&bsol;n"</code> is pushed on the stack.</li>
        <li>The {{sym-split}} symbol is executed, which splits the string using the newline character as a
            separator.</li>
        <li>The {{sym-puts}} symbol is executed, which prints the quotation on the stack.</li>
    </ul>
</article>