Command-line interface

On a command-line run:

sentient --help

This will present the various options provided by the executable. As you can see, Sentient supports the compilation and running of programs as well as a few other things, which we’ll come to later.

Usage: sentient [options] [file]

Sentient Language Compiler and Runtime, Version 1.0.0

Options:

  -h, --help                output usage information
  -v, --version             output the version number
  -c, --compile             compile a program to machine code
  -o, --optimise            optimise a compiled program
  -r, --run                 run a compiled program
  -s, --source              output the source of a compiled program
  -e, --exposed             output exposed variables of a compiled program
  -a, --assign '<json>'     assign some of the exposed variables
  -f, --assign-file <file>  read assignments from a file
  -n, --number <n>          find the given number of solutions
  -m, --machine <name>      use the specified machine adapter
  -i, --info                set the log level to info
  -d, --debug               set the log level to debug

For now, we’re going to be using Sentient in its vanilla mode without any options. By default, Sentient will compile and run programs in a single step and print the results. We’re going to be using this in our ‘Hello, world!’ example.