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Nilakan

CLI

The nilakan command reads Nilakan source, runs it, prints program output to stdout, and prints diagnostics to stderr. The installed nlk command is an alias with identical behavior.

Usage

Section titled “Usage”
nilakan [options] <file.nlk>
nilakan [options] -
nilakan [options]    Read piped stdin when stdin is not a terminal.

Replace nilakan with nlk in any invocation to use the short alias.

Inputs

Section titled “Inputs”

| Form | Behavior | | --------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | nilakan program.nlk | Reads a file. The path must end with .nlk. | | nilakan - | Reads stdin. | | piped stdin | Reads stdin when stdin is not a terminal. |

Options

Section titled “Options”

| Option | Behavior | | -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | -h, --help | Print usage and exit successfully. | | --max-rounds NUMBER | Override the global commit-round limit. | | --max-call-depth NUMBER | Override the function call-depth limit. | | --max-loop-depth NUMBER | Override the loop-depth limit. | | --max-prime-depth NUMBER | Override the maximum source prime depth. | | --string-quotes STYLE | Choose how strings are printed: double or single. | | --color MODE | Control diagnostic color output: auto, always, or never. |

Numeric limits must be nonnegative safe integers from 0 through 9007199254740991. Decimal fractions, exponent notation, negative values, and larger integer text are usage errors. Zero prohibits the corresponding operation.

Default runtime limits:

| Option | Default | | ------------------- | -------- | | --max-rounds | 100000 | | --max-call-depth | 100 | | --max-loop-depth | 100 | | --max-prime-depth | 5 |

Output

Section titled “Output”

print(...) output is written to stdout. Diagnostics and usage errors are written to stderr.

When NO_COLOR is set in the environment, diagnostics are printed without color, even when color mode is auto.

--string-quotes single changes printed string delimiters from double quotes to single quotes. Containers and err(name, message, code) output use the same string quote style recursively.

--color always forces diagnostic color, --color never disables diagnostic color, and --color auto uses terminal detection. NO_COLOR disables color when diagnostics are formatted.

Usage Errors

Section titled “Usage Errors”

The CLI exits with code 2 for usage errors:

  • unknown option
  • missing option value
  • invalid nonnegative integer option value
  • more than one positional input
  • file path not ending in .nlk
  • no file argument while stdin is a terminal

File-system failures are not usage errors. A missing file, directory path, permission failure, or other read error prints error: could not read '<path>': <reason> and exits with code 1.

Exit Codes

Section titled “Exit Codes”

| Code | Meaning | | ---- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | 0 | Program ran successfully, or help was printed. | | 1 | Nilakan syntax/static/runtime error, or input file read failure. | | 2 | CLI usage error. |

Examples

Section titled “Examples”
nilakan examples/hello.nlk
nilakan --string-quotes single examples/hello.nlk
nilakan --max-rounds 1000 examples/loop.nlk
cat examples/hello.nlk | nilakan -
Get-Content examples\hello.nlk | nilakan -
type examples\hello.nlk | nilakan -