Batsh – A language that compiles to Bash and Windows Batch
GitHub - batsh-dev-team/Batsh: A language that compiles to Bash and Windows Batch
Batsh
Notes from maintainers
This repo was transferred from the original author @BYVoid,
and has been upgraded to build on more recent OCaml versions (buildable on at least OCaml 4.08.1).
You can see the discussion thread which spawned this fork effort
here.
Note that this project is currently in minimum maintenance mode.
Issues, PR may not be actively dealt with.
The following sections may contain out of date info as we are still
in the process of going through the repo
Project description
Batsh is a simple programming language that compiles to Bash and Windows Batch.
It enables you to write your script once runs on all platforms without any additional dependency.
Both Bash and Batch are messy to read and tricky to write due to historical reasons.
You have to spend a lot of time learning either of them and write platform-dependent code for each operating system.
I have wasted lots of time in my life struggling with bizarre syntaxes and unreasonable behaviors of them, and do not want to waste any more.
If you happen to be a maintainer of a cross-platform tool which relies on Bash on Linux/Mac and Batch on Windows as "glue code", and found it painful to "synchronize" between them, you would definitely like to try Batsh.
How to get it
The easiest way
Try it online: http://batsh.org
Install from OPAM
Batsh is implemented in OCaml and managed by OPAM.

Install OPAM. See instructions.
Switch to the latest version (or at least 4.00.1) of OCaml by running opam switch.
Install Batsh: opam install batsh

Build from source
You have to install OCaml (version 4.00.1 or higher) development environment before compiling Batsh from source code, and follow steps below:

Download source code of Batsh from releases or clone with git.
Uncompress source code tarball.
make
make install
Run: batsh

Dependencies
If there is any missing dependency, you can install them by running opam install dune core_kernel ounit dlist cmdliner

dune: Build framework.
core_kernel: Core_kernel is the system-independent part of Core, Jane Street's industrial-strength alternative to the OCaml standard library.
ounit: Unit test framework.
dlist: A purely functional list-like data structure supporting O(1) concatenation.
cmdliner: Command line interfaces parser.

Syntax
The syntax of Batsh is C-based (derived from C programming language).
If you have learned C, Java, C++ or JavaScript, Batsh is quite easy for you.
Assignment
a = 1;
b = "string";
c = [1, 2, "str", true, false];
Expression
a = 1 + 2;
b = a * 7;
c = "Con" ++ "cat";
d = c ++ b;
Command
// On UNIX
output = ls();
// On Windows
output = dir();
// Platform independent
output = readdir();

// Test existence
ex = exists("file.txt");
If condition
a = 3;
if (a > 2) {
  println("Yes");
} else {
  println("No");
}
Loop
// Fibonacci
n = 0;
i = 0;
j = 1;
while (n < 60) {
  k = i + j;
  i = j;
  j = k;
  n = n + 1;
  println(k);
}
Function
v1 = "Global V1";
v2 = "Global V2";
function func(p) {
  v1 = "Local " ++ p;
  global v2;
  v2 = "V2 Modified.";
}
func("Var");
Recursion
function fibonacci(num) {
  if (num == 0) {
    return 0;
  } else if (num == 1) {
    return 1;
  } else {
    return (fibonacci(num - 2) + fibonacci(num - 1));
  }
}
println(fibonacci(8));
More examples
Syntax Highlighting
Vim

vim-Batsh

Emacs

batsh-mode

Built-in functions
In order to make script cross-platform, Batsh provided some "built-in" functions that will compile to platform-dependent code. It is assumed that Bash script runs on Linux or Mac OS and Batch script runs on Windows (XP or higher), which means Cygwin or wine are not supported.
print(text, ...)
Prints a text string to console without a newline.
println(text, ...)
Prints a text string to console with a new line (LF for bash, CRLF for batch).
call(path, arg, ...)
Runs command from path through shell.
bash(rawStatement)
Put rawStatement into compiled code for Bash. Ignore for Windows Batch.
batch(rawStatement)
Put rawStatement into compiled code for Windows Batch. Ignore for Bash.
readdir(path)
Equals to ls and dir /w.
exists(path)
Test existence of given path.
Command Line Usage
NAME
       batsh - A language that compiles to Bash and Windows Batch

SYNOPSIS
       batsh COMMAND ...

COMMANDS
       bash
           Compile to Bash script.

       batsh
           Format source file.

       winbat
           Compile to Windows Batch script.

OPTIONS
       --help[=FMT] (default=pager)
           Show this help in format FMT (pager, plain or groff).

       --version
           Show version information.

Why not Python/Ruby/Node.js/Lua
Yes you can use any of them as platform-independent glue code. But there are several disadvantages:

None of them is preinstalled on all platforms (including Windows).
Functionalities like process piping are not convenient to use.
Hard to integrate with existing code written in Bash or Batch.

Those reasons are why I developed Batsh.
License
MIT
Contributors

Carbo Kuo
Song Zhang
Anthony Chan
jeb-de
Al Ramirez
Nixola
Darren Ldl
Anton Kochkov

