Factor

The Factor programming language combines powerful language features with a full-featured library. The implementation is fully compiled for performance, while still supporting interactive development. Factor applications are portable between all common platforms. Factor can deploy stand-alone applications on all platforms. Full source code for the Factor project is available under a BSD license.

Getting Started

Building Factor from source

If you have a build environment set up, then you can build Factor from git. These scripts will attempt to compile the Factor binary and bootstrap from a boot image stored on factorcode.org.

To check out Factor:

• git clone git://factorcode.org/git/factor.git
• cd factor

To build the latest complete Factor system from git:

• Windows: build-support\factor.cmd
• Unix: ./build-support/factor.sh update

Now you should have a complete Factor system ready to run.

More information on building factor and system requirements.

To run a Factor binary:

You can download a Factor binary from the grid on http://factorcode.org. The nightly builds are usually a better experience than the point releases.

• Windows: Double-click factor.exe, or run .\factor.com in a command prompt
• Mac OS X: Double-click Factor.app or run open Factor.app in a Terminal
• Unix: Run ./factor in a shell

Learning Factor

A tutorial is available that can be accessed from the Factor environment:

"first-program" help

Some other simple things you can try in the listener:

"Hello, world" print

{ 4 8 15 16 23 42 } [ 2 * ] map .

1000 [1,b] sum .

4 iota  [
    "Happy Birthday " write
    2 = "dear NAME" "to You" ? print
] each

For more tips, see Learning Factor.

Documentation

The Factor environment includes extensive reference documentation and a short "cookbook" to help you get started. The best way to read the documentation is in the UI; press F1 in the UI listener to open the help browser tool. You can also browse the documentation online.

Command Line Usage

Factor supports a number of command line switches:

Usage: factor [Factor arguments] [script] [script arguments]

Common arguments:
    -help            print this message and exit
    -i=<image>       load Factor image file <image> (default factor.image)
    -run=<vocab>     run the MAIN: entry point of <vocab>
        -run=listener    run terminal listener
        -run=ui.tools    run Factor development UI
    -e=<code>        evaluate <code>
    -no-user-init    suppress loading of .factor-rc

Enter
    "command-line" help
from within Factor for more information.

You can also write scripts that can be run from the terminal, by putting #!/path/to/factor at the top of your scripts and making them executable.

Source Organization

The Factor source tree is organized as follows:

• build-support/ - scripts used for compiling Factor (not present in binary packages)
• vm/ - Factor VM source code (not present in binary packages)
• core/ - Factor core library
• basis/ - Factor basis library, compiler, tools
• extra/ - more libraries and applications
• misc/ - editor modes, icons, etc
• unmaintained/ - unmaintained contributions, please help!

Community

Factor developers meet in the #concatenative channel on irc.freenode.net. Drop by if you want to discuss anything related to Factor or language design in general.

• Factor homepage
• Concatenative languages wiki

Have fun!