Pear

Status

Pear is now archived and will no longer receive updates.

This project was an early-stage prototype exploring a custom scripting language and runtime. It reached a natural stopping point as the design scope expanded beyond its original intent.

Pear is a lightweight scripting language designed for clarity, flexibility, and fast automation.

It is not based on JavaScript or Lua, but it supports similar capabilities such as functions, tables, arrays, and modules while using its own syntax and execution model.

Pear is built for scripting, bots, tools, and extensible automation systems.

Current Features

Pear currently supports:

Core language

• let variables (declaration)
• set assignments (update values)
• Numbers, strings, booleans, and null
• Expressions (math + logic operators)
• if / else conditionals
• while loops
• return statements in functions

Functions

• First-class functions (fn)
• Function parameters
• Closures (functions can capture variables)
• Return values

Data structures

• Arrays: []
• Tables (maps / objects): { key: value }
• Nested structures supported

Modules

• import "file.pear" for file-based module loading

Standard runtime

Built-in global functions:

• print(...) → output to console
• sleep(ms) → async delay
• length(value) → get size of arrays/strings

Developer tools

Pear includes a full CLI toolchain:

• pear run <file> → execute a script
• pear repl → interactive shell
• pear eval "<code>" → execute inline code
• pear version → show version

Error system

• Runtime errors include line and column numbers
• Parser errors show descriptive messages
• Stack-safe execution model (no raw JS traces exposed to user code)

Runtime

Pear runs on a custom interpreter built in Node.js.

The execution pipeline is:

Source Code ↓ Tokenizer ↓ Parser (AST) ↓ Pear VM (Evaluator) ↓ Runtime Environment (JS bridge)

Installation

Prerequisite

• Node.js 16+

Install globally via npm:

npm install -g pear-lang

Usage

Run a file

pear run script.pear

Start REPL

pear repl

Evaluate inline code

pear eval "print('hello')"

Example

let x = 10

fn add(a, b):
    return a + b
end

let result = add(5, 7)

print(result)

Philosophy

Pear is designed around three principles:

• Clarity over complexity
• Control over abstraction
• Predictable execution

It aims to give scripting power similar to Lua and JavaScript without copying their syntax or runtime behavior.

Future roadmap

Planned features:

• Bytecode VM (performance upgrade)
• Package manager (pear install)
• Module exports (export)
• Async/await system
• Better debugging tools (stack traces, breakpoints)
• Standard library expansion