Dust

Dust is a data-oriented programming language and interactive shell. Dust can be used as a replacement for a traditional command line shell, as a scripting language and as a tool create or manage data. Dust is expression-based, has first-class functions, lexical scope and lightweight syntax.

A basic dust program:

output "Hello world!"

Dust can do two (or more) things at the same time with effortless concurrency:

run(
    'output "will this one finish first?"',
    'output "or will this one?"'
)

Dust can do amazing things with data. To load CSV data, isolate a column and render it as a line plot in a GUI window:

read_file("examples/assets/faithful.csv")
    -> from_csv(input)
    -> rows(input)
    -> transform(input, 'input.1')
    -> plot(input)

• Dust
  • Features
  • Usage
  • Installation
  • Contributing
  • The Dust Programming Language
    • Variables and Data Types
    • Tools
    • Lists
    • Maps
    • Tables
    • The Yield Operator
    • Functions
    • Time

Features

• Data visualization: GUI (not TUI) plots, graphs and charts are available from directly within dust. No external tools are needed.
• Powerful tooling: Built-in commands reduce complex tasks to plain, simple code. You can even partition disks or install software.
• Pipelines: Like a pipe in bash, dust features the yield -> operator.
• Format conversion: Effortlessly convert between dust and formats like JSON, CSV and TOML.
• Structured data: Dust can represent data with more than just strings. Lists, maps and tables are easy to make and manage.
• Developer tools: Dust has a complete tree sitter grammar, allowing syntax highlighting and completion in most code editors.

Usage

Dust is an experimental project under active development. At this stage, features come and go and the API is always changing. It should not be considered for serious use yet.

To get help with the shell you can use the "help" tool.

help()         # Returns a table will all tool info.
help("random") # Returns a table with info on tools in the specified group.
# The above is simply a shorthand for this:
help() -> where(input, 'tool == "random"')    

Installation

You must have the default rust toolchain installed and up-to-date. Install rustup if it is not already installed. Run cargo install dust-lang then run dust to start the interactive shell. Use dust --help to see the full command line options.

To build from source, clone the repository and run cargo run to start the shell. To see other command line options, use cargo run -- --help.

Contributing

Please submit any thoughts or suggestions for this project. To contribute a new command, see the library documentation. Implementation tests are written in dust and are run by a corresponding rust test so dust tests will be run when cargo test is called.

The Dust Programming Language

Dust is a hard fork of evalexpr; a simple expression language. Dust's core language features maintain this simplicity. But it can manage large, complex sets of data and perform complicated tasks through commands. It should not take long for a new user to learn the language, especially with the assistance of the shell.

If your editor supports tree sitter, you can use [tree-sitter-dust] for syntax highlighting and completion support. Aside from this guide, the best way to learn dust is to read the examples and tests to get a better idea of what dust can do.

Variables and Data Types

Variables have two parts: a key and a value. The key is always a text string. The value can be any of the following data types:

• string
• integer
• floating point value
• boolean
• list
• map
• table
• function
• time
• empty

Here are some examples of variables in dust.

string = "The answer is 42.";
integer = 42;
float = 42.42;
list = (1, 2, string, integer, float);
map.key = "value";
empty = ();

Tools

Tools are dust's built-in functions. Some of them can reconfigure your whole system while others do very little. They may accept different inputs, or none at all. For example, commands in the random group can be run without input, but the random_integer command can optionally take two numbers as in inclusive range.

die_roll = random_integer(1, 6);
d20_roll = random_integer(1, 20);
coin_flip = random_boolean();

message = "I hate dust.";
replace(message, "hate", "love")

Lists

Lists are sequential collections. They can be built by grouping values with parentheses and separating them with commas. Values can be indexed by their position to access their contents. Lists are used to represent rows in tables and most commands take a list as an argument. Their contents can be indexed using dot notation with an integer.

list = (true, 41, "Ok");

assert_equal(list.0, true);

the_answer = list.1 + 1;

assert_equal(the_answer, 42);

Maps

Maps are flexible collections with arbitrary key-value pairs, similar to JSON objects. Under the hood, all of dust's runtime variables are stored in a map, so, as with variables, the key is always a string.

reminder.message = "Buy milk";
reminder.tags = ("groceries", "home");

json = to_json(reminder);
append(json, "info.txt");

Tables

Tables are strict collections, each row must have a value for each column. Empty cells must be explicitly set to an empty value.

animals = create_table (
    ("name", "species", "age"),
    (
        ("rover", "cat", 14),
        ("spot", "snake", 9),
        ("bob", "giraffe", 2)
    )
);

Querying a table is similar to SQL.

names = select(animals, "name");
youngins = where(animals, 'age < 5');

The commands create_table and insert make sure that all of the memory used to hold the rows is allocated at once, so it is good practice to group your rows together instead of using a call for each row.

insert(
    animals,
    (
        ("eliza", "ostrich", 4),
        ("pat", "white rhino", 7),
        ("jim", "walrus", 9)
    )
);

assert_equal(count(animals.all), 6);

sorted = sort(animals);

The Yield Operator

Like a pipe in bash, zsh or fish, the yield operator evaluates the expression on the left and passes it as input to the expression on the right. That input is always assigned to the input variable for that context. These expressions may simply contain a value or they can call a command or function that returns a value.

"Hello dust!" -> output(input)

This can be useful when working on the command line but to make a script easier to read or to avoid fetching the same resource multiple times, we can also declare variables. You should use -> and variables together to write efficient, elegant scripts.

json = download("https://api.sampleapis.com/futurama/characters");
from_json(json)
    -> select(input, "name");
    -> input.4

Functions

Functions are first-class values in dust, so they are assigned to variables like any other value. The function body is wrapped in single parentheses. To call a function, it's just like calling a command: simply pass it an argument or use an empty set of parentheses to pass an empty value.

In the function bod, the input variable represents whatever value is passed to the function when called.

say_hi = 'output "hi"';
add_one = 'input + 1';

say_hi();
assert_equal(add_one(3), 4);

This function simply passes the input to the shell's standard output.

print = 'output(input)';

Because functions are stored in variables, we can use collections like maps to organize them.

math.add = 'input.0 + input.1';
math.subtract = 'input.0 - input.1';

assert_equal(math.add(2, 2), 4);
assert_equal(math.subtract(100, 1), 99);

Time

Dust can record, parse and convert time values. Dust can parse TOML datetime values or can create time values using commands.

dob = from_toml("1979-05-27T07:32:00-08:00")

output "Date of birth = " + local(dob);

time = now();

output "Universal time is " + utc(time);
output "Local time is " + local(time);