What is Aleph?

A new programming concept!. It allows interactivity by the combination of compiler and interpreter. Like scripting languages it is interpretative and like “normal” languages it acts as a compiler. Any typed command will be executed or, if a creation command was the last, compiled. Aleph is strictly object oriented and has a lot aspects of the FP-paradigm (functional programming). Values (numerical or whatever) are available only by functions. Any literal is either a known function or a identity-function of a value. There are variables available, but without types. A variable may contain values, objects or executable sequences. This is the consequent implementation of mathematical composition. To keep the length of sequences short, the normal notation is postfix (RPN). Of course there are tools to use the other infix and/or prefix notations. The postfix notation has historical and pragmatic reasons. Historical in the sense of its Forth ancestry (just like Java), pragmatic because it is much easier to program.

Virtual Machine V2M

V2M means "Squared Virtual Machine" The V2M is at first a virtual machine. Any virtual machine needs a executive machine to have elementary functionality. In Forth, Pascal or Java the CPU is used. So the basic instructions are given by the CPU instruction set. To make the System usable there are a lot of libraries (packages) needed. The V2M uses Java instead a hard CPU. So any Java command is a V2M command. Because Java has a virtual machine (JVM) and V2M has a virtual machine that uses the JVM you can say V2M is a "virtualized virtual machine".


There is a small (tiny) GUI to make the first steps easier. The GUI is completely written in V2M code because there must be an usable example. Installation with


If there is no system wide Java installation the path to the local Java installation must be put before java (/my/java/path/jdkXX/bin/java testV2M), where "/my/java/path" stands for your installing path. Any Java version beyond 1.4.2_05 is ok, that is the XX stands for. So any actual version (Java 5/6) can be used. If you compile with any of this newer versions, keep in mind that the classes are no longer compatible to JDK1.4.
The V2M creates the following Frame:

Keep your console open to see the system output. Now type in
1 2 3 .S
First this is simply text. Click "Start" and in the console appears
Stack = [ 3 2 1 ]
This shows the contents of the data stack. Now click "Clear" and type in
. . . .S
Really tree dots each followed by a space. The console shows
Stack = [ 3 2 1 ]321Stack = [ ]