FunctionalScript

FunctionalScript is a safe, purely functional programming language and a strict subset of ECMAScript/JavaScript. It's inspired by

• JSON and JSON5 as subsets of JavaScript values. JSON is also a subset of FunctionalScript values.
• asm.JS (a precursor of WebAssembly), as a subset of JavaScript.
• TypeScript, as a superset of JavaScript.

Its abbreviation is FJS.

The FunctionalScript specification describes the language the compiler accepts today; features not implemented yet are in spec/todo/.

Learn more about

• Purely Functional Programming in JavaScript,
• FunctionalScript and I/O.

This repository is a monorepo and distributed under MIT.

Getting Started

Install FunctionalScript via npm:

npm install -g functionalscript

or run the CLI without installing it, with npx functionalscript <command>.

Compiling a module

A FunctionalScript module is already a JavaScript module, so nothing has to be compiled to run it. fjs compile goes the other way: it resolves every import and writes the language the output name declares. The value outputs, .json and .data.js, initialize the complete module and its required dependencies, then serialize only the default export as data. Calls and operators can compute that data; a function remaining in the selected result is refused.

The graph outputs, .js, .edag.data.js and .rs, preserve the program without running module initialization, including functions, calls and operators within each output's supported profile. The .js writer supports ordinary and method calls, spreads and operators, but remains partial: it refuses graph shapes it cannot reconstruct as FunctionalScript source. See the output contracts and limits.

// m.f.js
export default ["text"];

// input.f.js
import c from "./m.f.js";
const a = 1;
export default [a, a, c, { x: c }];

fjs compile input.f.js output.data.js       # DataJS
fjs compile input.f.js output.js            # FunctionalScript
fjs compile input.f.js output.json          # JSON
fjs compile input.f.js output.edag.data.js  # the program's EDAG
fjs compile input.f.js output.rs            # a generated nanvm-lib module

Each .js name has an .mjs twin — .data.mjs, .mjs, .edag.data.mjs — for a file that must load as an ES module whatever the package's "type" says.

c is one array reached twice, so output.data.js keeps it shared:

const $0=["text"];export default [1,1,$0,{"x":$0}];

JSON is a tree and carries no identity, so output.json writes the array where each reference reaches it, as JSON.stringify does:

[1,1,["text"],{"x":["text"]}]

The specification is the reference for what the compiler accepts, and its Output section says what each output writes or refuses.

The fjs CLI

| Command | Description | Documentation | |---------------|----------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | fjs test | Run the FunctionalScript test suite | fjs/emergent_testing | | fjs compile | Compile a FunctionalScript module to JavaScript or JSON | fjs/compiler | | fjs cas | Content-addressable storage (add, get, list) | fjs/cas/README.md | | fjs mcp | MCP server over stdio, exposing the CAS and Evo as tools | fjs/mcp/README.md | | fjs ci | Generate the GitHub Actions CI and npm publishing workflows | fjs/ci/README.md | | fjs web | Serve a directory over HTTP | fjs/web/README.md | | fjs run | Run a FunctionalScript module as a Node program | fjs/README.md | | fjs help | Print the available commands | fjs/README.md |

Run fjs help to print the available commands, or see fjs/README.md for the full CLI reference. Commands also accept short aliases, which fjs help prints; the documentation spells them out instead.

Vision

We aim to create a safe, cross-platform programming language that can work in any JS platform without any build step. There are thousands of programming languages, and we don't want to create another one that others must learn. Instead, we take the opposite approach: we remove everything that makes the most popular and cross-platform language unsafe, insecure, or less portable.

Applications

FunctionalScript code can be used:

• safely in any JavaScript/TypeScript application or library;
• as a JSON with expressions, see DJS;
• as a query language;
• as a smart contract programming language in DeFi.

Design Principles

In FunctionalScript:

• Any module is a valid JavaScript module. No additional build steps are required.
• Code should not have side-effects. Any JavaScript statement, expression, or function that has a side effect is not allowed in FunctionalScript. There are no exceptions to this rule, such as unsafe code, which can be found in Rust, C#, and other languages.
• A module can depend only on another FunctionalScript module.
• It also has no standard library. Only a safe subset of standard JavaScript API can be used without referencing other modules.

Sponsors

• KirillOsenkov,
• antkmsft,
• Mark Heyman.