Making a Language

This post is part of the making a language series . A series that teaches you how to implement a programming language using Rust.

This post covers name resolution. Desugaring left us with an Ast<String> that we can’t yet feed to type inference. Name resolution will turn that into a Ast<Var> that is ready for type checking by figuring out what the names in our program mean.

Why do we name things? A silly question, perhaps. No one had to tell me to name my pet rock Francis. One look at his sedimentary exterior was all it took to christen him.

Names help us identify with things. This is just as true in computers as it is in rock companions. In programming languages, names help us identify and share values. Rather than repeat 1 + 2 every time we need it, we can name it three and reference it by name.

Naming helps make our program more legible to our fellow programmers. Names bundle up complexity and offload it, allowing us to comprehend bigger and better programs. They also provide a means of sharing.

When we name a value, in most languages, we give it a place in memory. three doesn’t just let us skip saying 1 + 2 every time, it also let’s the computer skip recomputing 1 + 2 every time. Naming places in memory is very handy for keeping track of them as a human. It turns out it’s less handy to the computer.

Computer Friendly Names Link to heading

The computer is solely interested in knowing where a value lives in memory, and by extension when two values are actually the same because they live in the same place. Human readable names aren’t great for this purpose because of scoping and shadowing. Two features that help humans manage names, but hinder the computer.

A scope is a map from names to their values at a particular point in our program. Consider the program:

let one = 1;
let two = 2;
let three = add one two;
add three two

Our scope at let two = 2; would contain one. But our scope at add three two would contain: one, two, and three.

Scopes stack atop each other. If we introduce a function, its body is in a new scope:

let y = 2;
let f = |x| add x y;
f 1

|x| add x y introduces a new scope that stacks on top of the existing scope, containing y. When we finish defining f, our |x| scope is popped off the stack and we can no longer access x.

We can see that y is accessible from within |x| add x y. If we can’t find a name within a scope, we go up the stack and see if we can find it there. This behavior gives rise to our second feature: shadowing.

Introducing a new scope lets us redefine a previously defined name. Imagine our previous code example was:

let y = 2;
let f = |y| add y y;
f 1

Our function’s scope introduces the name y. We can no longer refer to y = 2 within the function body. We’ve shadowed that name with our function parameter |y|.

As we learned in desugaring, let expressions are functions under the hood. This means each let expression introduces a new scope that can shadow existing names. It’s perfectly valid to write:

let x = 1;
let x = add x x;
let x = add x x;
x

It’s nice to not have to make up names like x' or x0 for values that are immediately consumed. As a reader, it’s helpful to see that x = 1 gets shadowed. I know for the remainder of that expression x = 1 won’t be referenced again. I can put it out of mind.

Shadowing is a controversial feature, though. It can make it harder to tell what a name references and it can be easy to miss that a name was shadowed. Plenty of production languages eschew shadowing and are successful. That’s a design discussion for a different day. Our language will have shadowing, and I like it that way.

Resolving the Names Link to heading

Back to names. Scoping complicates determining what a name references. When we see a name, we have to walk our stack of scopes searching for where it’s defined. As a human, I don’t mind this. I can read the source code and see where the variable is defined, hopefully.

As a computer, making this trek every time we see a name does not sound very efficient. Name resolution revolves around resolving this discrepancy. The computer doesn’t really care about what name a value has. Computers don’t need to read.

Name resolution figures out all our scoping and shadowing in one pass, and then produces a new computer friendly form that doesn’t require scoping or shadowing. Because we’ve already written type inference, we actually know what this form is. Each name will be replaced by a unique variable, which is essentially just an integer counter:

struct Var(usize);

After name resolution our shadowing example becomes:

let v0 = 1;
let v1 = add v0 v0;
let v2 = add v1 v1;
v2

We assign each name a unique variable and those variables represent unique locations in memory, unlike x. We no longer have to worry about stacks of scopes. We can shove every name in our program in a big HashMap<Var, T> without worry two names will overlap. And in fact, we’ll do just that in name resolution.

There’s one more task we accomplish during name resolution, ensuring all our names are defined. It’s perfectly legal (I am not a lawyer; Talk to your local council) to write:

let f = |y| add x y;
g 1

But it’s utterly nonsensical to the compiler. g has no definition and may not even be a function. x is referenced with nary a let binding in sight. As we resolve our names, such errors will make themselves abundantly clear and we’ll keep track of them. They won’t stop our progress, we’re resilient, but we will replace undefined names with a Hole.

Setup our Pass Link to heading

Let’s see some code. We start the same place we do for almost every pass: a shared struct.

struct NameResolution {
supply: VarSupply,
names: HashMap<Var, String>,
errors: HashMap<NodeId, NameResolutionError>,
}

supply supplies all of our variables:

#[derive(Default)]
struct VarSupply {
next: usize,
}
impl VarSupply {
fn supply(&mut self) -> Var {
let id = self.next;
self.next += 1;
Var(id)
}
}

It’s a counter, but it wraps our count up as a Var, which is very nice of it.

names maps our unique variables back onto the names they came from. We’ll use this in diagnostics. We’d like to avoid showing the user var12, if we can help it.

errors tracks errors that arise during name resolution. There’s actually only one error that can arise:

enum NameResolutionError {
UndefinedVar(NodeId, String),
}

When we encounter an undefined variable, we’ll emit this error. We can do this at most one time per AST node, so we keep them all in a map. Although between you and me, I suspect this will only happen for Ast::Var nodes.

Resolve Method Link to heading

NameResolution has one method resolve that does all our resolving.

impl NameResolution {
fn resolve(
&mut self,
ast: Ast<String>,
env: im::HashMap<String, Var>
) -> Ast<Var> {
match ast {
// Put some cases here...
}
}
}

resolve takes an env that maps our names to their unique Vars. env tracks our scopes. Because it’s a persistent map, we don’t need a stack of scopes. Adding a value to our map produces a new map, leaving the old map intact. When we recursively call resolve, we pass it our updated map, reusing the call stack as our stack of scopes.

Any instance of env only ever holds the in scope names. If a name overwrites an existing entry in env, that name is being shadowed in the current scope and we can’t access the overwritten entry regardless. This is why we’re okay with using a HashMap<String, Var>, which is susceptible to name shadowing. Our names member, by contrast, uses a HashMap<Var, String> because it stores names for our program. It needs to use Var as it’s key so that overlapping names don’t overwrite each other in the map.

From there resolve matches on our ast. We’ll handle it case by case, starting with functions:

Ast::Fun(id, name, body) => {
let var = self.supply.supply();
self.names.insert(var, name.clone());
let body = self.resolve(*body, env.update(name, var));
Ast::fun(id, var, body)
}

Because we desugar let expressions into applied functions, this is our only case that can introduce names. We create a Var for our function parameter and map it back to its name. Upon updating env to map our name to our Var, we resolve our names within body. We then reconstruct our name-resolved function.

Our Var case immediately uses the vars introduced by Fun:

Ast::Var(id, name) => match env.get(&name).copied() {
Some(v) => Ast::Var(id, v),
None => {
self
.errors
.insert(id, NameResolutionError::UndefinedVar(id, name));
let var = self.supply.supply();
Ast::Hole(id, var)
}
}

When we find a Var for our name, we successfully resolve it and move on. Upon failing to find a Var, we have an error. We don’t stop at our error, however. We record the error and treat our variable as a hole.

We also, perhaps shockingly, emit a hole for our Hole case:

Ast::Hole(id, name) => {
let var = self.supply.supply();
self.names.insert(var, name.clone());
Ast::Hole(id, var)
}

We name our holes, so we also assign a Var to our hole and map it back to its name. This doesn’t matter for our program execution. We’ll never compile a hole to executable code, but it’s helpful for error reporting and diagnostics.

App doesn’t have any names, but we have to resolve any names in its children:

Ast::App(id, fun, arg) => {
let fun = self.resolve(*fun, env.clone());
let arg = self.resolve(*arg, env);
Ast::app(id, fun, arg)
}

Int doesn’t have names and doesn’t even have children, so there’s nothing to do:

Ast::Int(id, i) => Ast::Int(id, i)

Never change Int. You are my rock.

resolve is our main and only method on NameResolution. We’re done. Why did we setup a whole struct to share our state between one method? I didn’t want to write resolve(supply, names, errors, ast, env) at every call site, sue me. More ideologically, consistency is key. We’ve established the pattern and it’s helpful to employ it, even for one method.

Everything gets put together in our top level name_resolution method:

fn name_resolution(
ast: Ast<String>
) -> NameResolutionOut {
let mut nameres = NameResolution::default();
let ast = nameres.resolve(ast, im::HashMap::default());
NameResolutionOut {
ast,
errors: nameres.errors,
names: nameres.names,
}
}

Recall names tracks our mapping from Var back to the human names. We’ll need that in our overarching compiler, so we include it in the output for our pass.

Example Link to heading

Let’s see name resolution in action. We’ll start with a program that reuses a lot of names:

let x = |x| x;
let y = |y| x y;
let x = 3;
y x

That’s enough X’s and Y’s to send me hurtling back to algebra class. Despite our only two names being x and y, scoping and shadowing mean those names reference disparate values throughout our expression.

Our first binding let x = |x| x; already exemplifies both features. let x introduces a new scope where x is defined as |x| x. Our let x is immediately shadowed by our function parameter x. The body of our function then returns function parameter x, not let binding x.

In our following let y = |y| x y; binding we’ve left the |x| x scope. Now x does refer to our let binding, which is good because we’re using it as a function. We see a similar shadowing of y for our parameter. Our function parameter y shadows the let bound y.

After that we shadow x once again with the let binding let x = 3;. Since this shadowing is in the same scope as let x = |x| x;, that binding is no longer available.

Our final y x uses the latest bindings for each name and will be the same as (|y| (|x| x) y) 3 at runtime. After name resolution, we’ll have figured all this out and left behind unique Vars for each name:

let v0 = |v1| v1;
let v2 = |v3| v0 v3;
let v4 = 3;
v2 v4

Name resolution was our final keystone. We’ve completed the arch! It’s been quite the journey but we now have every pass of our compiler. As always, you can find the full code in the repo . We can feed the Ast<Var> produced by name resolution into type inference and create a complete pipeline. In fact, that’s precisely what we’ll do next.