Learn: Extending min

min provides a fairly complete standard library with many useful modules. However, you may feel the need to extend min in order to perform more specialized tasks.

In such situations, you basically have the following options:

Implementing new min modules using min itself

When you just want to create more high-level min operator using functionalities that are already available in min, the easiest way is to create your own reusable min modules.

To create a new module, simply create a file containing your operator definitions implemented using either the operator operator or the lambda operator

(stack.dup *) ^pow2 (stack.dup stack.dup * *) ^pow3 (stack.dup * stack.dup *) ^pow4

Save your code to a file (e.g. quickpows.min) and you can use it in other Nim files using the require operator and the import (if you want to import the operators in the current scope):

'quickpows require :qp 2 qp.pow3 qp.pow2 puts ;prints 64

Specifying a prelude program

If you want, you can execute the min executable with the -p option to specify a prelude program that will be executed when min is started. This can be useful to specify your custom behaviors, selectively import modules, and define your own symbols, like this:

$ min -i -p:myfile.min

Embedding min in your Nim program

If you’d like to use min as a scripting language within your own program, and maybe extend it by implementing additional operators, you can use min as a Nim library.

To do so:

  1. Install min sources using Nifty as explained in the Download section.
  2. Import it in your Nim file.
  3. Implement a new proc to define the module.

The following code is taken from HastySite and shows how to define a new hastysite module containing some symbols (preprocess, postprocess, process-rules, …):

import min proc hastysite_module*(i: In, hs1: HastySite) = var hs = hs1 let def = i.define() def.symbol("preprocess") do (i: In): hs.preprocess() def.symbol("postprocess") do (i: In): hs.postprocess() def.symbol("process-rules") do (i: In): hs.interpret(hs.files.rules) # ... def.finalize("hastysite")

Then you need to:

  1. Instantiate a new min interpreter using the newMinInterpreter proc.
  2. Run the proc used to define the module.
  3. Call the interpret method to interpret a min file or string:
proc interpret(hs: HastySite, file: string) = var i = newMinInterpreter(file, file.parentDir) i.hastysite_module(hs) i.interpret(newFileStream(file, fmRead))

Tip

For more information on how to create new modules with Nim, have a look in the lib folder of the min repository, which contains all the min modules included in the standard library.

→ Continue to min Module Management