Mihan for VS Code

Mihan — a programming language that reads the way Persian is spoken.

What you get

• The words, as you type. Type def or funct and press Enter. The rest of the function appears, and the name is selected, so the next thing you type is the name. The same happens for if / agar, for / har, class / darghan, try / koshish and serve / serva_bgo. def writes funct, because the file stays in Finglish. After a dot, only the methods of the value in front of the dot.
• Mistakes, while the file is open. Underlined in place, in Persian and in English, each with a code you can look up.
• Go to definition. Hold Ctrl and click a name to jump to the line that gave it a value — including a name inside a function, which jumps to the function's own copy of it.
• What a name means. Hover over anything to see whether it is a variable, a function, a class, or one of the language's builtins, and what that builtin does.
• The outline. Every darghan, funct, shenase and dastoor in the file, in the order you wrote them.
• Tidy on save. The same tidying mihan fmt does. Turn it off with "editor.formatOnSave": false.
• A new program in one command. Mihan: Start a new program writes a first file that already runs, so the next thing you do is run it.

Everything above is decided by Mihan's own language server, in Mihan's own code, reading the same tables the language runs from. A word added to the language appears in this editor at the same moment, with the same explanation.

Learning Mihan in this editor

You do not need to install anything else to learn: the editor reads the tutorial and tells you what each word means as you go.

1. Open the tutorial and read it where it lives. docs/tutorial/ is the course, in order, and every page is a real program. Open a page and the editor explains every word in it — hover over agar or bargard and the one-line meaning appears, because the language server reads the same table the language runs from.

2. Run the page you are reading. With the file open, either use your own terminal:

   mihan run docs/tutorial/02-arzhad.mhn
   

   or install the Code Runner extension and press Ctrl+Alt+N. The file runs, and you see exactly what the page claims it prints.

3. Change it. Learning to program is mostly changing things and seeing what happens. Delete a bracket, misspell a name, divide by zero — the mistake appears underlined in the editor before you run anything, in Persian and in English.

4. Start your own. Press Ctrl+Shift+P, choose Mihan: Start a new program, give it a name, and a folder appears with a main.mhn that already runs. Then mihan run <folder>.

5. Check your own work. Put what you expect your program to print at the top of the file, like this:

   #khoroji
   #| 42
   #| tamam shod
   

   and mihan test yourfile.mhn tells you whether it still prints that. This is how every page of the tutorial is checked, and page 9 (09-ayaz.mhn) explains the shape. A program that can check itself is a program you can change without fear.

6. Ask the language what it has. Open the Command Palette and run Mihan: Show the language server's messages to see what the editor is asking behind the scenes, or type mihan doc in a terminal for the whole language in one place.

Two things worth knowing while you learn:

• The REPL is faster than a file for a single question. mihan repl, then type 2 + 2 and press Enter. It answers 4. Names you give it stay for the next line.
• The editor and the command line are the same language. Nothing you see in the editor is a simplified version of Mihan; it is the same language server the compiler runs, so what the editor tells you is what will happen when you run it.

Installing

1. Install the extension from the store: Mihan Language on the VS Code Marketplace, or search Mihan Language in the Extensions panel of VS Code.
2. Open a file ending in .mhn. Type def and press Enter. A function appears, with the name selected.

The extension already includes Mihan for Windows, so it works right away. To run programs from a terminal, download mihan.exe from the Mihan Language releases and run mihan.exe install.

What the editor gets, and where it comes from

Suggestions, signature help, hover, mistakes, jumps and formatting all come from mihan lsp, Mihan's own language server (internal/lsp). Keywords come from token.Keywords and builtins from eval.Builtins, so a word added to the language shows up in the editor at once. The snippets in snippets/mihan.json are the larger project shapes (m-api, m-page, m-window, m-script, m-khoroji).