LICENSE.txt (1492, 2020-11-13)
core.gk (2435, 2020-11-13)
fib.gk (381, 2020-11-13)
gherkin (28347, 2020-11-13)
pipeseq.sh (389, 2020-11-13)
presentation.gk (2628, 2020-11-13)
read_profile.clj (406, 2020-11-13)
simple_test.sh (597, 2020-11-13)
> **This project is dormant.** I have not worked on it in years, and am unlikely to continue work on it anytime soon. I encourage you to check out "mal" -- "Make a Lisp" -- by Joel Martin, a project inspired by this one, that includes implementations in dozens of languages, including Bash: https://github.com/kanaka/mal. While it's missing garbage collection, mal's Bash Lisp is incredibly clean and easy to hack on. For additional historical perspective, see [this article on my homepage](https://tailrecursion.com/~alan/Lisp/GherkinHistory.html).
# gherkin
gherkin is a functional programming language and interpreter written in [GNU Bash 4](http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/) designed for extreme portability across *nix platforms. For rationale, see [Why gherkin?](https://github.com/alandipert/gherkin/wiki/Why-gherkin%3F)
gherkin is a dialect of [Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp), and like other Lisps such as [Clojure](http://clojure.org/) and [Scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_(programming_language) it features homoiconicity, first-class functions, and primitive functions for operating on a variety of data types such as strings, integers, symbols, and lists. As a citizen of *nix and the shell environment, it also provides *nix and shell interoperation facilities.
gherkin is currently **alpha** status, but our hope is to continue feature development until gherkin can be used in place of Bash for general purpose *nix scripting. If you're curious about our progress toward our first release, see [our milestones](https://github.com/alandipert/gherkin/issues/milestones).
## Try gherkin
*gherkin requires GNU Bash version 4 or higher. If you're on Linux, this is probably already your shell. If you're on a Mac, we recommend you install a recent version of Bash with [Homebrew](http://brew.sh/).*
#### REPL
Start a Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop ([REPL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REPL)) and evaluate a simple expression:
./gherkin
> (+ 1 2)
3
You may exit the REPL with Ctrl-D.
#### Running a script
Run [fib.gk](fib.gk) to find the 60th [Fibonacci number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number):
./gherkin -l fib.gk
#### Start a REPL and try a [core library](core.gk) function:
./gherkin
> (load-file "core")
nil
> (map inc '(1 2 3))
(2 3 4)
You may also load the core library and start a REPL with `./gherkin -l core.gk -r`.
## Learning more & getting involved
gherkin is brand new, under active development, and not yet formally released. As such, its usage is error-prone and its documentation spotty. If you'd like to help us improve gherkin, its documentation, or have any questions, please join us:
* In`#gherkin` on `irc.freenode.net`.
* On the [gherkin-dev@googlegroups.com mailing list](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/gherkin-dev).
## Related tools
* [gherkin-mode](https://github.com/candera/gherkin-mode) is an [Emacs](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) mode for editing gherkin contributed by [Craig Andera](https://github.com/candera)
# Thanks
* to [Darius Bacon](http://wry.me/blog/) for his version of [awklisp](https://github.com/darius/awklisp) which was the basis for the original prototype