The Clue programming language

Clue is a programming language that compiles blazingly fast into Lua code with a syntax similar to languages like C or Rust.

Clue tries to be almost as simple as Lua (with only a slightly more advanced syntax) but adds many optional features that can make code look better or make some things (like metatables) easier to code.

Clue does not compile to a specific version of Lua: flags can be toggled to alter the output to allow most if not all versions or modifications of Lua to be compiled to with Clue.

General syntax differences

• Code blocks are now inside {} instead of then/do/repeat and end/until
• Comments are made with // ... or /* ... */

If you want a complete documentation of every change and addition in Clue check the wiki.

Example code

@ifos linux {
	@define GREETING "Hello, Linux user "
} @else_ifos macos {
	@define GREETING "Hello, MacOS user "
} @else {
	@define GREETING "Hello, Windows user "
}
  
@macro GREET(target) { $GREETING .. $target .. "!" }
  
print($GREET!("Maiori"))

local fn add(x = 0, y = 0) {
    return x + y
}

global n = 1

while n < 10 {
    n += add($, $)
    match n {
        3 => {
            continue
        }
        4 if x => {
            break
        }
        default => {
            print(n < 3 ? n : -n)
        }
    }
}

More examples can be found in:

• the wiki
• the Examples directory
• a game made with LÖVE
• Clue's MessagePack library
• a simple graph visualizer made with LÖVE

How to install

Using Cargo

1. Paste and run this command in the console: cargo install clue
2. Type clue in the console to run the compiler, it will explain the rest

Clue supports extra features that can be toggled when installing:

• interpreter: adds the --execute flag to let Clue run the generated output using mlua
• rpmalloc: uses rpmalloc to improve performance, not available on all platforms

By default Clue enables both features.

Using Linux packages

These can be downloaded in the latest release.

• .deb

sudo dpkg -i clue_<version>_<arch>.deb

• .rpm

sudo rpm -i clue-<version>.<arch>.rpm

Using the AUR

• With paru

paru -S clue

• With yay

yay -S clue

• With makepkg

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/clue.git
cd clue
makepkg -si

Manual installation

1. Download the latest release and save it somewhere
2. Open your system environment variables
3. Add the path to the directory that contains clue.exe in the PATH variable
4. Type clue in your cmd/PowerShell to run the compiler, it will explain the rest

More coming soon!

There are still features that I'm considering adding and others that will be added soon. The most likely ones to be added in the future are:

• type system (coming in 4.0)
• better error messages (comming in 4.0)
• proper language server support (coming in 4.0)

For any suggestion or bug you can make a github issue. If you need help with the language itself, you can check out the Discord server.

I hope Clue will be useful to you :)

Why is Clue named Clue?

I have no clue.