Introduction to Wave v0.0.9-pre-beta: Explicit Mutability, Smarter Functions, and Safer Pointers

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

We are very excited to introduce Wave 'v0.0.9-Free Beta' — A version that offers Explicit Mutability, Smarter Functions, and Safer Pointers.

Wave is designed with low-level features in mind, and in this version, We are making a big leap in that direction.

📐 Language Specification Updates

🧠 Introduction of let, let mut, and var for Explicit Mutability

• Wave now supports three types of variable declarations to express mutability explicitly:

  • var: fully mutable, intended for general-purpose variables

  • let: immutable, reassignment is forbidden

  • let mut: mutable under immutable declaration context (safe controlled mutability)

• This design introduces clearer ownership intent and improves safety in low-level and system-oriented programming.

🧠 Default Parameter Values in Function Declarations

• Wave functions can now define parameters with default values:

  fun main(name: str = "World") {
      println("Hello {}", name);
  }
  

• If an argument is not provided at runtime, the default value will be inserted automatically by the compiler.

• This enables more expressive and flexible function declarations.

✅ Added Features

🧠 Parser and IR support for explicit mutability

• Introduced internal Mutability enum: Var, Let, LetMut

• Implemented parse_let() with optional mut keyword for parsing

• Wave's IR generation now restricts let variables from being reassigned

🧠 IR handling of function parameter defaults

• When default values are present in function parameters, they are now correctly recognized and handled during LLVM IR generation

• If an argument is not passed at runtime, the default value is inserted directly into the stack-allocated variable

🔧 Bug Fixes

🐛 Incorrect string output in println() format

• Fixed an issue where str values (i8*) were printed as raw addresses

• The format translation now maps i8* to %s correctly

• Values are passed directly to printf as string pointers, avoiding ptr_to_int conversion

🐛 Incorrect handling of deref assignment

• Fixed an issue where dereferencing a pointer and assigning its value caused type mismatches in the generated IR.

• The IR now properly handles dereferencing a pointer (deref p1 = deref p2;) and assigning the values correctly without causing i32** mismatches.

✨ Other Changes

🧠 IR-level enforcement of immutability

• Reassignment attempts to let variables now cause a compile-time panic

• All memory operations (store/load) respect mutability constraints

🧠 IR-level enforcement of pointer dereferencing

• Introduced a fix to ensure that pointer dereferencing (deref p1 = deref p2;) is handled correctly in the IR.

• Adjusted the generate_address_ir() function to properly dereference pointers and load/store values without causing pointer type mismatches.

Showcase

![Image1description](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1754270365525/ec473068-392d-4bc1-a6f1-3f1cf05231e8.png align="left")

![Image3description](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1754270366298/20648347-0dd6-4820-9522-8d2108dfd417.png align="left")

![Image2description](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1754270367126/74f553fd-89ea-4159-9f7b-1fa5427abddf.png align="left")

![Image4description](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1754270367816/68c70de2-96fe-4830-94b2-c0b821adf543.png align="left")

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

Installation Guide

For Linux:

1. Download and Extract:

   • Download the wave-v0.0.9-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/v0.0.9-pre-beta/wave-v0.0.9-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
     

   • Extract the archive:

     sudo tar -xvzf wave-v0.0.9-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin
     

2. 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
     

3. Verify Installation:

   • Open a terminal and type:

     wavec --version
     

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

Contributor

@LunaStev | 🇰🇷

Website

Website

GitHub

Ko-fi