# 🚀 Elba Programming Language

📖 About

Elba is a statically-typed programming language designed for clarity, performance, and developer productivity. It features a powerful type system with generics, type inference, and multiple compilation backends including LLVM for native code generation.

Why Elba?

• 🎯 Static Typing with Inference - Type safety without verbose annotations
• ⚡ Multiple Backends - From rapid prototyping to native performance
• 🧩 Generics - Write reusable, type-safe code
• 🛡️ Null Safety - Optional types prevent null reference errors
• 🔧 Modern Tooling - Interactive REPL, error reporting, benchmarks
• 📦 Module System - Organize code effectively

✨ Features

Language Features

• ✅ Static type checking with type inference
• ✅ Generic functions and structs with type parameters
• ✅ Optional types (T?) for null safety
• ✅ Union types (A | B | C)
• ✅ Type aliases for better code documentation
• ✅ First-class functions
• ✅ Arrays with rich operations
• ✅ Structs with methods
• ✅ Module system with imports and exports

Compiler & Tooling

• 🚀 Multiple Execution Backends

  • AST Interpreter (instant execution)
  • IR Interpreter (5x faster)
  • C Code Generator (50x faster)
  • LLVM Backend (100x faster) ⚡

• 🛠️ Developer Tools

  • Interactive REPL with history
  • Comprehensive error messages
  • Performance benchmarking
  • IR visualization
  • Verbose debugging mode

Standard Library

• 📐 Math Module - Trigonometry, power, square root, abs, etc.
• 📝 String Module - Manipulation, trimming, padding, repetition

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

• Zig 0.15.2 or later (Download)
• (Optional) LLVM 20 for native compilation
• (Optional) GCC or Clang for C code compilation

Building from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/elba.git
cd elba

# Build the compiler
zig build

# Verify installation
./zig-out/bin/elba --version

Quick Test

# Run an example
./zig-out/bin/elba examples/hello_world.elba

# Start the REPL
./zig-out/bin/elba repl

🏁 Quick Start

See full documentation in CONTRIBUTING.md and examples in the examples/ directory.

📜 License

Elba is released under the MIT License.