Limbo (programming language)

Limbo supports the following features:

• modular programming
• concurrent programming
• strong type checking at compile and run-time
• interprocess communication over typed channels
• automatic garbage collection
• simple abstract data types

The Dis virtual machine that executes Limbo code is a CISC-like VM, with instructions for arithmetic, control flow, data motion, process creation, synchronizing and communicating between processes, loading modules of code, and support for higher-level data-types: strings, arrays, lists, and communication channels.{{Cite web |date=2000 | url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250220003220/https://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/papers/dis.html |title=Dis Virtual Machine Specification |access-date=2 February 2015 |publisher=Vita Nuova}} It uses a hybrid of reference counting and a real-time garbage-collector for cyclic data.{{cite journal | url = http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/concurrent_gc/concurrent_gc.pdf | title = Very Concurrent Mark and Sweep Garbage Collection without Fine-Grain Synchronization | author = Lorenz Huelsbergen and Phil Winterbottom | year= 1998 | journal=1998 International Symposium on Memory Management}}

Aspects of the design of Dis were inspired by the AT&T Hobbit microprocessor, as used in the original BeBox.

Limbo uses Ada-style definitions as in:

name := type value;

name0,name1 : type = value;

name2,name3 : type;

name2 = value;

implement Command;

include "sys.m";

sys: Sys;

include "draw.m";

include "sh.m";

init(nil: ref Draw->Context, nil: list of string)

{

sys = load Sys Sys->PATH;

sys->print("Hello World!\n");

}

The 3rd edition of the Inferno operating system and Limbo programming language are described in the textbook Inferno Programming with Limbo {{ISBN|0-470-84352-7}} (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), by Phillip Stanley-Marbell. Another textbook The Inferno Programming Book: An Introduction to Programming for the Inferno Distributed System, by Martin Atkins, Charles Forsyth, Rob Pike and Howard Trickey, was started, but never released.

{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

• The Inferno operating system
• Alef, the predecessor of Limbo
• Plan 9 from Bell Labs, operating system
• Go, similar language from Google
• AT&T Hobbit, a processor architecture which inspired the Dis VM

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/limbo.html Vita Nuova page on Limbo]
• [http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/descent A Descent into Limbo] by Brian Kernighan
• [http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/limbo The Limbo Programming Language] by Dennis M. Ritchie and [http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/addendum Addendum] by Vita Nuova.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20081011054044/http://www.gemusehaken.org/ipwl/ Inferno Programming with Limbo] by Phillip Stanley-Marbell
• [http://swtch.com/~rsc/thread/ Threaded programming in the Bell Labs CSP style]
• {{Citation | url = https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/src/62ae0f75aa714c7bab5e714fcf90f4026b7ba911/limbo/?at=default | title = Dis source code | access-date = 2017-09-20 | archive-date = 2017-09-21 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170921095053/https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/src/62ae0f75aa714c7bab5e714fcf90f4026b7ba911/limbo/?at=default | url-status = dead }}
• {{Citation | url = https://web.archive.org/web/20250211084729/https://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/papers/hotchips.html | title = The design of the Inferno virtual machine | publisher = Vita nuova}}.
• {{Citation | publisher = Cat V | title = Inferno | edition = 4th | contribution = Dis VM design | url = http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/dis_VM_design}}.
• {{Citation | publisher = Cat V | title = Inferno | edition = 4th | contribution = Dis VM specification | url = http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/dis_VM_specification}}.

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Category:Concurrent programming languages

Category:Free and open source compilers

Category:Inferno (operating system)

Category:Programming languages created in 1995

Category:Virtual machines