# tricu

## Introduction

tricu (pronounced "tree-shoe") is a programming language experiment in Haskell. It is fundamentally based on the application of [Triage Calculus](https://olydis.medium.com/a-visual-introduction-to-tree-calculus-2f4a34ceffc2), an extended form of [Tree Calculus](https://github.com/barry-jay-personal/typed_tree_calculus/blob/main/typed_program_analysis.pdf), terms, but minimal syntax sugar is included.

tricu is the word for "tree" in Lojban: `(x1) is a tree of species/cultivar (x2)`.

I have fully embraced the slopmachine (LLM-assisted development) for this project. Nothing is stable or sacred. We will discover sanity at the end of the journey but we won't strive for it until then.

## Acknowledgements 

Tree Calculus was discovered by [Barry Jay](https://github.com/barry-jay-personal/blog). The addition of Triage rules were suggested by [Johannes Bader](https://johannes-bader.com/). Johannes is also the creator of [treecalcul.us](https://treecalcul.us) which has a great intuitive code playground using his language LambAda.

## REPL examples

```
tricu < -- Anything after `--` on a single line is a comment
tricu < id = (a : a) -- Lambda abstraction is eliminated to tree calculus terms
tricu < head (map (i : append i " world!") [("Hello, ")])
tricu > "Hello,  world!"
tricu < id (head (map (i : append i " world!") [("Hello, ")]))
tricu > "Hello,  world!"

tricu < -- Intensionality! We can inspect the structure of a function or data.
tricu < triage = (a b c : t (t a b) c)
tricu < test = triage "Leaf" (z : "Stem") (a b : "Fork")
tricu < test (t t)
tricu > "Stem"
tricu < -- We can even convert a term back to source code (/demos/toSource.tri)
tricu < toSource not?
tricu > "(t (t (t t) (t t t)) (t t (t t t)))"
tricu < -- or calculate its size (/demos/size.tri)
tricu < size not?
tricu > 12

tricu < !help 
tricu version 1.1.0
Available commands:
    !exit        - Exit the REPL
    !clear       - Clear the screen
    !reset       - Reset preferences for selected versions
    !help        - Show tricu version and available commands
    !output      - Change output format (tree|fsl|ast|ternary|ascii|decode)
    !definitions - List all defined terms in the content store
    !import      - Import definitions from file to the content store
    !watch       - Watch a file for changes, evaluate terms, and store them
    !refresh     - Refresh environment from content store (definitions are live)
    !versions    - Show all versions of a term by name
    !select      - Select a specific version of a term for subsequent lookups
    !tag         - Add or update a tag for a term by hash or name
```

## Installation and Use

You can easily build and run this project using [Nix](https://nixos.org/download/).

- Quick Start (REPL): 
  - `nix run git+https://git.eversole.co/James/tricu`
- Build executable in `./result/bin`: 
  - `nix build git+https://git.eversole.co/James/tricu`

`./result/bin/tricu --help`

```
tricu Evaluator and REPL

tricu [COMMAND] ... [OPTIONS]
  tricu: Exploring Tree Calculus

Common flags:
  -? --help       Display help message
  -V --version    Print version information

tricu [repl] [OPTIONS]
  Start interactive REPL

tricu eval [OPTIONS]
  Evaluate tricu and return the result of the final expression.

  -f --file=FILE  Input file path(s) for evaluation.
                    Defaults to stdin.
  -t --form=FORM  Optional output form: (tree|fsl|ast|ternary|ascii|decode).
                    Defaults to tricu-compatible `t` tree form.

tricu decode [OPTIONS]
  Decode a Tree Calculus value into a string representation.

  -f --file=FILE  Optional input file path to attempt decoding.
                    Defaults to stdin.
```