C4

A minimal programming language that transpiles to C. Hobby project for learning compiler design and is not intended to replace C.

Current Features

Working:

• Integer variables with := assignment
• Arithmetic operators: +, -, *, / with proper precedence
• Comparison operators: <, >, ==, !=, <=, >=
• Parentheses for grouping
• print() statement
• if/else statements
• while statements
• Full lexer → parser → code generator pipeline

Example:

x := 5 + 10;
y := x * 2;
result := y > 15;
print(result);

Generates valid C code, compiles, and runs.

What's Missing

• Functions
• Types beyond integers
• Strings
• Custom output names

Build and run

make
./c4t tests/comparisons.c4
./program

Running memory leak tests

To do this, you must have podman installed on your machine.

# 1. build the image
podman build -t c4t-dev .

# 2. run the script
./leak_check.sh

## or do it yourself:
podman run --rm -it \
  -v "$PWD:/code" \
  -w /code \
  c4t-dev \
  bash -c "
    make &&
    valgrind --leak-check=full --show-leak-kinds=all --track-origins=yes ./c4t tests/numbers.c4
  "