Introduction to Wave v0.0.8-pre-beta: Pointer Support Arrives

Hello! I'm LunaStev, the developer of Wave.

We are very happy to introduce Wave v0.0.8-pre-beta —
a version that officially brings first-class pointer support to the language.

Wave was designed with low-level capabilities in mind, and in this version,
we’re making a major leap in that direction.

✅ Added Features

🧠 Pointer System: First-Class Pointer Support in Wave

• Introduced ptr<T> type syntax for defining typed pointers
  
  → Example: var p: ptr<i32>;

• Implemented &x address-of operator
  
  → Compiles to LLVM IR as store i32* %x

• Implemented deref p dereference operator
  
  → Generates IR as load i32, i32* %p

• Supported pointer-based initialization
  
  → var p: ptr<i32> = &x; is now fully parsed and compiled

• Enabled dereferencing for both expression and assignment
  
  → Example: deref p = 42; is valid and stored directly via IR

• Address values can be printed as integers
  
  → %ld used for pointer-to-int cast in formatted output
  
  → println("address = {}", p); prints memory address

🔧 Bug Fixes

🐛 Fixed Pointer Initialization Parsing Issue

• Changed VariableNode.initial_value from Option<Literal> to Option<Expression>
• Allowed &x to be accepted as a valid initializer expression

🐛 Fixed LLVM IR Crash on AddressOf Expression

• Added support for Expression::AddressOf in IR generation
• Prevented crash by checking for variable reference inside address-of

🐛 Fixed printf format mismatch for pointers

• %s → %ld for pointer values
• Ensured correct casting of i32* to i64 before printing

✨ Other Changes

🧠 Improved Format String Handling in IR

• Added dynamic format string generation based on argument types
• Format strings now automatically adapt for int, float, and pointer types

Showcase

Thank you for using Wave! Stay tuned for future updates and enhancements.

Installation Guide

For Linux:

1. Download and Extract:

   • Download the wave-v0.0.8-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz file from the official source.
   • Use the wget command:

    wget https://github.com/LunaStev/Wave/releases/download/v0.0.8-pre-beta/wave-v0.0.8-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
   

• Extract the archive:
  

   sudo tar -xvzf wave-v0.0.8-pre-beta-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin
  

1. Setting up LLVMs

   • Open a terminal and type:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install llvm-14 llvm-14-dev clang-14 libclang-14-dev lld-14 clang
    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/llvm-14/lib/libLLVM-14.so /usr/lib/libllvm-14.so
    export LLVM_SYS_140_PREFIX=/usr/lib/llvm-14
    source ~/.bashrc
   

2. Verify Installation:

   • Open a terminal and type:

    wavec --version
   

• If the version number displays, the installation was successful.

Contributor

@lunastev | 🇰🇷

Website

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