Meaningful Language

A simple, expressive, and powerful interpreted language written in C.
Made by Brwolf (Banaolf)

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What is Meaningful?

Meaningful is a hand-crafted interpreted language built from scratch in C. It aims to be readable and expressive while giving the programmer real control — including optional pointer access, a garbage collector, type annotations, and more.

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Features

• Clean, readable syntax
• Dynamic typing with optional type annotations and conditions
• Functions, lambdas, closures
• Lists, dictionaries, strings, floats, booleans
• forEach, while, repeat loops
• File I/O (readfile, overwrite, put, createfile, deletefile)
• Import system
• Mark-and-sweep garbage collector
• Pointers — with automatic sibling invalidation and runtime warnings
• Type casting with @
• Default function parameters
• Ternary operator
• Native functions: input, random, sleep, length, clock, and more
• Shell / REPL mode
• Cross-platform

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Platform Support

Note: Only Linux and Windows are tested

Platform	Supported
Windows (32/64, Cygwin)	✅
Linux	✅
macOS	✅
FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD / DragonFly	✅
Android	✅
Haiku	✅
Solaris	✅
AIX	✅
HP-UX / IRIX / Tru64	✅
iOS	⚠️ (no URL opening)

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Installation

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

Download the .deb file from the releases page and run:

sudo apt install ./meaningfulang-VERSION.deb

Or double click it

Windows

msi Installers dont come for every release, but I try to put installers like this whenever i can. If there is an msi for that release, just download it and double click it, accept the licence and install. May prompt you for admin priviliges

Build from source

rename the makefile.lin (or .win if you are in windows) and run makeif you have make installed, else

gcc interpreter.c lexer.c parser.c -o meaningful -lm

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Usage

meaningful script.mean        # Run a file
meaningful                    # Start the REPL shell

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Examples

Hello World

print "Hello, World!"

Functions with type annotations, conditions and default parameters

set greet(name@string:not_empty, greeting@string:not_empty = "Hello")
    print greeting + ", " + name + "!"
end

greet("Brwolf")           :: Hello, Brwolf!
greet("Brwolf", "Hey")    :: Hey, Brwolf!

Pointers

set x = 10
set y = ^x   :: y points to x
set z = ^x   :: z also points to x

print y^     :: 10
y^ = 20
print x      :: 20 — x was changed through y

unset x      :: frees x, y and z are automatically invalidated
             :: Warning: pointer 'y' was invalidated because its target 'x' was freed.
             :: Warning: pointer 'z' was invalidated because its target 'x' was freed.

Meaningful is one of the only languages that automatically invalidates and removes all pointers to a variable when it is freed, with runtime warnings — giving you C-like control with a safety net.

Lambdas

set myDict = {
    "greet": do(name)
        print "Hello, " + name
    end
}

myDict.greet("Brwolf")   :: Hello, Brwolf

Type annotations with conditions

set safeDivide(a@int:positive, b@int:positive)
    return a / b
end

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License

Licensed under BMLL2.0. See LICENSE for details.