MeXiCo

MeXiCo is an esoteric programming language, and a compiler for the language with the same name, compiling source code to DNS MX records. This also explains the name.

It's greatly inspired by blinry's legit project and brainfuck, and is written in go. This project was born and written on a boring railroad trip from Hamburg to Düsseldorf.

Machine specification

Like some other esoteric programming languages, a MeXiCo machine has a storage of unlimited size, also called infinite tape, and a first-in-last-out stack. It's possible to read from and write to the tape with a movable head. This makes MeXiCo turing-complete.

Design

As stated above, the source code of a MeXiCo program completely resides in MX records. The compiler ensures that generated MX records are RFC-conform. This means, it is possible to deliver MeXiCo source code over a DNS server of your choice, and, using the time-to-live value, cache source code on a DNS resolver of your choice.

Like in the old BASIC days, source code lines are defined by a number at the beginning of a line, sitting in the Priority value of the MX record. Lines which are not filled out are skipped. As a short explanation:

someprogram.esolang.mil		IN	MX	10 <line 10>
someprogram.esolang.mil		IN	MX	20 <line 20>
someprogram.esolang.mil		IN	MX	30 <line 30>

Due to the fact that the payload of a MX records needs to be a FQDN, every command is represented as a subdomain of the domain mexico.invalid., which is obviously non-existent. If a command contains spaces, for example if they carry an argument (push 5), every space is replaced by a minus sign.

Instructions

Below, you can find the instructions used in the MX records.

Command	Involves	Consumes Stack	Pushes to Stack	Description
left	Tape Head	0	0	Moves the tape head one cell to the left
right	Tape Head	0	0	Moves the tape head one cell to the right
pusht	Tape, Stack	0	1	Reads the current cell value and pushes it on top of the stack
push n	Stack	0	1	Pushes the value n to the stack
pop	Tape, Stack	1	0	Pops top stack value to the current cell
dup	Stack	1	2	Duplicates the topmost stack value
del	Stack	1	0	Deletes the topmost stack value, ignoring its value
eq	Stack	2	1	Checks if stack[0] == stack[1]. Pushes 1 to the stack if equal, 0 otherwise
not	Stack	1	1	Inverses stack[0]
gt	Stack	2	1	Checks if stack[0] > stack[1]. Pushes 1 to the stack if greater, 0 otherwise
lt	Stack	2	1	Checks if stack[0] < stack[1]. Pushes 1 to the stack if smaller, 0 otherwise
add	Stack	2	1	Calculates stack[0] + stack[1], and pushes the result to the stack
sub	Stack	2	1	Calculates stack[0] - stack[1], and pushes the result to the stack
mult	Stack	2	1	Calculates stack[0] * stack[1], and pushes the result to the stack
div	Stack	2	1	Calculates stack[0] / stack[1], and pushes the result to the stack
mod	Stack	2	1	Calculates stack[0] % stack[1], and pushes the result to the stack
read	Stack	0	1	Reads a character from the user, and pushes its char value to the stack
print	Stack	1	0	Prints stack[0] as a character
jmp	Program Flow, Stack	1	0	Jumps to the line number specified by stack[0]
jmpc	Program Flow, Stack	2	0	Jumps to the line number specified by stack[0], if stack[1] is not 0.

Please note that stack[0] refers to the topmost stack value, and stack[i] refers to the i-th stack value.

Source code

The syntax of the source code is strongly aligned with the Instructions table above. However, there's a bit of syntactical sugar to make programming in this language enjoyable. Take a look into the examples directory of this repository to get a basic idea of it.

Comments

Every line starting with #, // or ; is ignored by the compiler.

Labels

You can define labels like this:

// This program reads a character from the user, and subtracts 1 from it, until it is zero.
read

// Let's loop here
LOOP:
push 1
sub 
push 0
lt
push LOOP
jmpc

// We're done!

As you can see, labels can be defined with a : after the label name, and it can be used as a value for push. At compile time, it is replaced with the corresponding line number.

Implementations

There is a reference implementation for the compiler, mexico, and a reference implementation for the interpreter, mexigo. Both can be found in this repository.

Compiler "mexico"

Simply run go install github.com/maride/mexico/mexico@latest to get the compiler.

The mexico compiler takes three arguments:

• -input to specify the source code file
• -output to specify the output path for the zonefile
• -baseDomain, the base domain to compile the source code for. This should be the domain you are planning to host the source code on.

For example. to compile the Fibonacci.mxc example for the domain fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc, you could use this command:

./mexico --input ../examples/Fibonacci.mxc --output /srv/zones/fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc --baseDomain fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc

If no problems occurred and the compiler didn't run into an issue, nothing is printed.

Interpreter "mexigo"

Simply run go get github.com/maride/mexico/mexigo to get the interpreter.

The mexigo interpreter takes only one argument - the domain to execute:

./mexigo fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc

This will give you an output similar to this:

> $ ./mexigo fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc
mexigo - the reference interpreter for the mexico esolang!
See github.com/maride/mexico for further information.

2019/12/08 17:22:27 Resolving fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc for MX records
2019/12/08 17:22:27 Found 24 code lines, interpreting them...
'\x02' (2)
'\x03' (3)
'\x05' (5)
'\b' (8)
'\r' (13)
'\x15' (21)
'"' (34)
'7' (55)
'Y' (89)
'\u0090' (144)
'é' (233)
'Ź' (377)
'ɢ' (610)
'ϛ' (987)
'ؽ' (1597)
2019/12/08 17:22:27 Stack is currently 0 entries big
2019/12/08 17:22:27 Tape is currently 2 cells big
Cell 0: 987 (ϛ)
Cell 1: 1597 (ؽ)
2019/12/08 17:22:27 Found no commands after line 24. Stopping.

Examples

You can find examples in the examples directory of this repository.

I currently host the Fibonacci.mxc on fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc, means you can run it with mexigo fibonacci.mxc.maride.cc!

I challenge you to write more examples. ;)

License

I chose to release this project under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.