Projects

pycparser - a complete C99 parser

Originally released in 2008, pycparser is now the most commonly used Python parser for the C programming language. It's used in CFFI, and through it in other prominent Python projects like pycryptography. The following are some additional uses of pycparser, taken from real user reports:

• C code obfuscator
• Front-end for various specialized C compilers
• Static code checker
• Automatic unit-test discovery
• Adding specialized extensions to the C programming language

pycparser's input is pre-processed C source code, and its output is an AST data structure. It also comes with a code generator that emits C back from the parsed AST.

pyelftools - parsing ELF and DWARF formats

A Python library for parsing and analyzing ELF files and DWARF debugging information, originally released in 2012. pyelftools provides both low-level and high-level APIs for querying ELF and DWARF, and as a proof of capability ships with with a fairly powerful clone of the readelf command-line tool.

This readelf clone is also used for an extensive test suite that compares pyelftools to the original tool taken from binutils. This is important to maintain high implementation fidelity since DWARF is a notoriously difficult format to parse.

pyelftools is widely used by embedded developers as part of custom toolchains and also in the security community to analyze binaries for exploits.

raft - a complete Go implementation of Raft

An instructional implementation of the Raft distributed consensus algorithm in Go.

One of the goals of this project is to explore how the built-in concurrency primitives of Go can help implementing complex algorithms for distributed computing.

Comes with an accompanying blog post series that begins with this post, and a powerful automated test suite that helps exercise and visualize the consensus algorithm.

gobyexample - an unofficial example-driven tutorial for Go

Go by Example is one of the best-known and widely used tutorials for the Go programming language. It teaches the language by presenting practical, brief, well-documented examples for a large variety of topics.

It's a bit like the old "cookbook" style books for programming languages, but collected in a single easily-searchable website.

This project was founded by Mark McGranaghan. I started contributing in 2019, and took over its maintenance in 2021.

static-server - a simple but powerful server for static files

When developing web applications locally, for basic test cases we can open an HTML file directly in the browser (using the file:/// scheme). However, this is sometimes insufficient, and in several scenarios it's necessary to properly serve the HTML (along with its JS and CSS). Some cases where I encountered this are web applications that use at least one of:

• Web workers
• Web sockets
• WASM
• Separate API servers, requiring CORS
• Loading ES modules from separate files

static-server is a static file server with useful defaults and some advanced options (like CORS and TLS); it can be installed or go run without installing, and very easy to use.

See this blog post for more details.

gemini-cli - access Gemini LLMs from the command-line

Command-line interface for Google's Gemini family of large language models. Useful for terminal-based LLM interactions, as well as textual similarity and clustering analysis using embeddings and SQLite DBs.

See this blog post for a real-life usage example.

pss - power tool for searching in source code files

A command-line tool for recursive grep-ing inside programming projects. It knows about the extensions of common programming languages and searches only in the right files; it also knows to ignore directories like .git and __pycache__. For example, pss --py Enum will search for Enum, recursively starting from the current directory; it will search only in .py and .pyw files (the latter is sometimes used on Windows).

pss was inspired by earlier tools like ack. It was released in 2011 and thus predates newer tools like ripgrep by several years.

wasm-wat-samples - WebAssembly Text code samples

A growing collection of code samples showcasing the WebAssembly textual format. It tries to cover the handling of various WASM data types and instructions, writing small but realistic programs in the language and interfacing with the host via WASI.

The project includes JS code to load and test the WASM samples using Node.js as the host.

bobscheme - a Scheme implementation

Bob is a suite of implementations of the Scheme programming language. It includes a Scheme interpreter, a stack-based virtual machine and a compiler (from the Scheme language to the VM's bytecode), all written in Python.

It also includes an alternative VM implementation written in C++; this one implements a standard mark-and-sweep garbage collector.

A test suite ensures that a set of Scheme programs executes correctly via the interpreter and both the VMs.

go-sudoku - a toolkit for solving and generating Sudoku puzzles

go-sudoku can solve Sudoku boards, but its focus is on generating fun Sudoku puzzles.

It has an interesting architecture; the code is written in Go and runs from the command-line, but it's also compiled to WebAssembly and is available to use in the browser, with a bit of HTML and JavaScript scaffolding.

There's an online demo of generating Sudoku boards available here.

luz-cpu - a CPU simulator, with an assembler and linker

Luz is a custom 32-bit RISC CPU, created for educational purposes. It's designed to be an embedded CPU with custom memory-mapped peripherals, and comes with a few sample peripherals; more can be plugged in using a simple interface.

This project includes a functional simulator for the Luz CPU. The simulator requires a binary image of the program to run, containing binary-encoded Luz machine language. To program the CPU, the project provides an assembler and a linker.

The assembler takes mnemonic assembly input and compiles it to an object file with machine code. The assembly language is fairly standard and should be familiar to anyone who writes assembly code for RISC CPUs.

The linker enables enables separate compilation, by linking multiple object files into a single binary image; it resolves relocations to support function calls and data references across object files.

bfjit - JIT for the Brainf*** language

bfjit is a suite of implementations of the Brainf*** programming language, and is described in a series of blog posts starting here. It's a study of implementing simple JIT compilers.

It includes several interpreters with increasing level of optimization, a from-scratch JIT compiler written in C++, a JIT compiler that relies on LLVM and yet another JIT compiler written in Python using PeachPy.

go-ungrammar - Ungrammar implementation for Go

Ungrammar is a DSL for concrete syntax trees (CST). This implementation is based on the original ungrammar crate from the rust-analyzer project, also borrowing some test files from it.

See this blog post for additional background.

wcx64 - wc tool in x64 assembly

A clone of the GNU wc command-line tool for Linux in pure x86-64 assembly code.

The main goal of this project was exploring how to interact with the Linux OS in assembly. Most tools do it via libc, but I wanted to avoid any dependenices, so this code issues direct system calls to the OS.

tupperformula - an in-browser demo of Tupper's formula

An in-browser demo of Tupper's formula, a mathematical curiosity that can "draw" arbitrary images - including itself - given the right input. See this blog post for additional details.

There's an online demo available here. In allows bi-directional exploration, mapping between the input number to the Tupper formula and the produced plot, and vice-versa.

colorful-lines - an in-browser game

My JS clone of the Colorful Lines game. This code was written in 2010, ported over from an earlier Perl version I wrote in 2003.

You can play it online here.

line-plotting - web-based 2D function plotter

An exploration of 2D plotting using JavaScript on a canvas element. Enables drawing arbitrary functions expressed as JS code, with a given sampling (number of points) and automatically scales the Y axis.

This demo also implements cubic spline interpolation to interpolate many more points for smoother curves. This is useful to explore how faithfully we can plot 2D functions from a small number of samples.

There's an online demo available here.

lsystem - a web simulation of L-systems

An L-system is a formal grammar for expressing fractal-like drawings.

This project includes a parser and simulator for the L-system language, producing fractal images on a canvas from a given description and parameters.

There's an online demo available here. It has some sample descriptions you can try to generate well-known fractals from very short textual descriptions.

js-8080-sim - online assembler & simulator for the 8080 CPU

Simple online editor for Intel 8080 assembly language, with a simulator and a UI demonstrating the computation results - registers and memory state, and so on.

For this project I wrote the assembler and UI, and forked the simulator from another project (with slight modifications). One can run the assembler + simulator from the command line (with Node.js) or in the browser.

An online version is available here.

perlmix - a simulator and assembler for the MIX computer

MIX is a hypothetical computer created by Donald Knuth for his original TAOCP edition. Knuth uses MIX for detailed performance analysis of the algorithms presented in his books.

perlmix is a complete implementation of the MIX computer along with the MIXAL assembly language. It helped me run and tinker with the programs taken from TAOCP while reading parts of the book.

perlmix is a very old project! I started thinking about it in 2003 and finally completed it in 2005. I no longer maintain it, but the code works just fine and is in the public domain if someone wants to play with it.

ESMS - Electronic Soccer Management Simulator

ESMS is a simulator for fantasy soccer leagues; it hails from the play-by-email fantasy leagues of the 1990s. While this project has been in unmtaintained mode for a really long time now, I'm still listing it here since it holds a special place in my heart.

First of all, it was popular! In its heyday, ESMS was used by hundreds of leagues and thousands of people in fantasy soccer communities. And that's in the 1990s, when the internet was a much smaller place.

And second, this was my first major programming project, going all the way back to 1998 (keep that in mind if you examine the code!). I started this project together with a friend and we hacked on it together for a year or so, after which I kept maintaining and improving it for a few additional years.