Welcome to the future (of the past)

TimL is a Lisp dialect implemented in and compiling down to VimL, the
scripting language provided by the Vim text editor. Think Clojure meets VimL.

Is this a joke?

If you mean the 6,000 lines of working code, then no, I poured hundreds upon
hundreds of very serious hours into that. But if you’re referring to the fact
it’s woefully underdocumented, adds considerable overhead to an already slow
host platform, and ultimately unlikely to gain any traction, then yeah,
probably.

Language features

• Clojure like syntax and API, including everything from rich syntax literals
  to destructuring.
• Namespaces, including refer and alias.
• timl.core, a tiny but growing API resembling clojure.core.
• The same persistent collection types and interfaces, including vectors, hash
  maps, hash sets, lists, and lazy sequences.
• Macros, including syntax quoting and the implicit &form and &env.
• Metadata. (Some collection types don’t support it yet.)
• Reference types, including vars, atoms, futures.
• Extensible type system, including defmethod for duck typing. (This is the
  most significant departure from Clojure.)
• Caching compiler generates real VimL.

VimL interop

• TimL functions are actually VimL dictionaries (objects) containing a
  dictionary function (method) and a reference to the enclosing scope.
• Defining a symbol baz in namespace foo.bar actually defines
  g:foo#bar.baz. If that symbol refers to something callable (like a
  function), calling foo#bar#baz() on the VimL side will invoke it.
• Arbitrary Vim variables and options can be referred to using VimL notation:
  b:did_ftplugin, v:version, &expandtab. You can also change them with
  set!: (set! &filetype "timl").
• #*function returns a reference to a built-in or user defined function.
  You can call it like any other function: (#*toupper "TimL is pretty neat").
• Interact with VimL exceptions with throw/try/catch/finally.
• Call a Vim command with execute: (execute "wq").
• Lisp macros are a wonderful way to encapsulate and hide a lot of the pain
  points of VimL. The current standard library barely scratches the surface
  here.

Getting started

If you don’t have a preferred installation method, I recommend
installing pathogen.vim, and
then simply copy and paste:

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/tpope/timl.git

Once help tags have been generated, you can view the manual with :help timl.
There’s not a whole lot there, yet. If you know Clojure, you can probably
guess a bunch of the function names.

Start a repl with :TLrepl. Tab complete is your friend. The first time may
take several seconds (if your computer is a piece of shit), but compilation is
cached, so subsequent invocations will be super quick, even if Vim is
restarted.

The familiar ns macro from Clojure is mostly identical in TimL.
:refer-clojure is now :refer-timl, which is identical to
(refer 'timl.core opts). :use only supports symbol arguments.

(ns my.ns
  (:refer-timl :exclude [+])
  (:use timl.repl)
  (:require [timl.file :as file]
            [timl.test]))

You can use Clojure’s in-ns, require, refer, alias, and use,
however use and require are limited to a single argument.

(in-ns 'my.ns)
(use 'timl.repl)
(require 'timl.file)
(alias 'file 'timl.file)

Put files in autoload/*.tim in the runtime path and they will be requirable.

License

Copyright © Tim Pope.

The use and distribution terms for this software are covered by the Eclipse
Public License 1.0, which can
be found in the file epl-v10.html at the root of this distribution.

By using this software in any fashion, you are agreeing to be bound by the
terms of this license. You must not remove this notice, or any other, from
this software.