Introduction to Wave v0.1.1-pre-beta: Inline Assembly, Pointer Chain, and Array Support

Hello! I'm LunaStev, the developer of Wave.

We are excited to announce Wave v0.1.1-pre-beta —
This update introduces inline assembly (asm {}) support, enabling you to write low-level system code directly in Wave, such as making syscalls with direct register manipulation.

Additionally, Wave now fully supports pointer chaining (ptr>) and array types (array), including index access, address-of operations, and validation of literal lengths — expanding Wave's capability for systems-level and memory-safe programming.

These improvements bring Wave closer to its vision as a low-level but expressive programming language.

✅ Added Features

⚙️ Inline Assembly (asm { ... }) Support

• Introduced asm { ... } block syntax to embed raw assembly instructions directly within Wave code.

• Supports instruction strings (e.g., "syscall") and explicit register constraints via in("reg") var and out("reg") var.

• Variables used in in(...) are passed into specified registers; variables in out(...) receive output from registers.

• Supports passing literal constants directly to registers (e.g., in("rax") 60).

• Pointer values (e.g., ptr) are correctly passed to registers such as rsi, enabling low-level syscalls like write.

• Internally leverages LLVM's inline assembly mechanism using Intel syntax.

• Currently supports single-output only; multiple out(...) constraints will overwrite each other.

• Does not yet support clobber lists or advanced constraint combinations.

• Provides essential capability for system-level programming (e.g., making direct syscalls, writing device-level code).

⚠️ This is not a fully general-purpose inline ASM facility yet, but it enables practical low-level operations within Wave. Full support is planned for later phases.

⚙️ Make pointer chain explicit

• Nested parsing like ptr, ptr>

• Can create ptr for any type (no restrictions on T)

• Support for consecutive deref operations (e.g., deref deref deref)

⚙️ Array type complete

• IndexAccess (numbers[0]) handling

• ArrayLiteral → Parse into AST and validate length

• AddressOf → Support array literals with address-of values (e.g., [&a, &b])

• Confirmed that array supports any type as T

✨ Other Changes

🧠 Library and Binary 2 Coexist

• Add lib.rs for easy package manager creation, development, and easy access.

Showcase

Thank you for using Wave! Stay tuned for future updates and enhancements.

Installation Guide

For Linux:

1. Download and Extract:

   • Download the wave-v0.1.1-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz file from the official source.
   • Use the wget command:

    wget https://github.com/LunaStev/Wave/releases/download/v0.1.1-pre-beta/wave-v0.1.1-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
   

• Extract the archive:
  

   sudo tar -xvzf wave-v0.1.1-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin
  

1. Setting up LLVMs

   • Open a terminal and type:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install llvm-14 llvm-14-dev clang-14 libclang-14-dev lld-14 clang
    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/llvm-14/lib/libLLVM-14.so /usr/lib/libllvm-14.so
    export LLVM_SYS_140_PREFIX=/usr/lib/llvm-14
    source ~/.bashrc
   

2. Verify Installation:

   • Open a terminal and type:

    wavec --version
   

• If the version number displays, the installation was successful.

Contributor

@lunastev | 🇰🇷

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