Newspeak

Esoteric programming language with an interactive interpreter.

Derkune
2
0
Python

Newspeak is a self-modifying substitution-based language for text editing (esolang). Newspeak is employed by the Ministry of Truth (MINITRUE) for live editing of news, truth, and true news. Never speak falsity with Newspeak!

To run Newspeak, launch with python newspeak.py with argument --run program.txt. This will launch the file program.txt in interactive mode.

python newspeak.py --run program.txt

Newspeak was created with python 3.11.8, the further from this version the less likely it will run.

Newspeak operates on lists of commands, with some commands accepting an argument. Here is an example of a command list:

{FIND|deceased|REPLACE|born}

Most programs in Newspeak consist of several lists of commands:

{FIND|Jhonson|INSERT|comrade }
{FIND|Stevenson|INSERT|traitor }

Lists of commands can contain other lists:

{FIND|@|REPLACE|{FIND|#|REPLACE|@}}

On execution, the above command will replace the mark “@” with the following command:

{FIND|#|REPLACE|@}

When executing a file, Newspeak will search for the first valid command list it encounters. After finding one, it executes every command one after another. If any of them fail, the command list is deleted from the file. If every command in a list executes successfully, Newspeak resets itself to start executing from the beginning.

This ensures that if a command is able to be executed, it is executed on every part of the file. However, it is a job of an editor at MINITRUE to keep programs from going into infinite loops.

Because lists and text they edit coexist in the same space, Newspeak can be said to be self-modifying.

Full list of commands for the interactive Newspeak interpreter:

  • simply pressing Enter without entering any command will advance 1 turn of processing the current program and output the report on processing. The vast majority of progams need several steps to complete!
  • help will output this message.
  • stop, exit, quit, e, q are all aliases of each other. They stop the current interpeter session.
  • snap will output the current state of the field being processed.
  • output [file name with extension] will output the current state of the board to a file at the passed argument.
  • process will enter the intepreter into a processing mode. In this mode, processing turns will advance without the input from the editor. To stop it, enter s (as in stop) and press Enter.

Full list of Newspeak language keywords:

  • FIND|arg: finds the argument in text, starting from the end of current selection. If finds, sets selection cursors to the edges of the argument. If doesn’t find, fails the current command list.
  • REMOVE|arg: finds the argument between the current selection cursors. If finds, deletes this text from the field. If doesn’t find, fails the current command list.
  • DELETE: Has no argument. Simply deletes everything between current selection cursors. Always succeeds.
  • REPLACE|arg: replaces everything between current selection cursors with the argument. Always succeeds. Can accept SELF.
  • INSERT|arg: inserts the argument at the start of current selection. Always succeeds. Can accept SELF.
  • APPEND|arg: inserts the argument at the end of current selection. Always succeeds. Can accept SELF.
  • ONCE: does nothing. Accepts no arguments. Always fails. Useful for making commands one-time-use-only.
  • SEEK|arg: moves the starting and ending cursors to coincide according to arg. Arg can take one of the following forms:
    • SOL: start of line, relative to the start of current selection.
    • EOL: end of line, relative to the end of current selection.
    • SOF: start of file.
    • EOF: end of file.
    • n: can be any integer.
      • If positive, moves the end of selection by n characters right and the start of selection to coincide with it.
      • If negative, moves the start of selection by n characters left and the end of selection to coincide with it.
      • If 0, does nothing.
  • Finally, arguments to REPLACE, INSERT and APPEND can be SELF. In this case, the text that is inserted with these commands is the current command’s very text.

Additional features of the language include:

  • Comments can be included in the program with <angle brackets>. They need to be paired and can’t be nested for now. Comments are removed from the file before running it.
  • Commands can include newlines and tabs for better readability. These characters are removed from commands before running the file. Pro tip: switch your code editor to use tabs for indentation. Turn on line wrap, while you’re at it.
  • Command arguments can contain escaped characters \{, \}, and \|.
    • When FIND, REMOVE, INSERT, APPEND, and REPLACE have an escaped special character, they turn it into the unescaped version for searching in text or inserting into text. If you want to find an escaped character or to insert an escaped character, escape it in the argument twice: \\|.