The Shen OS Manual

For some years, the best online guide to Shen. This still remains the best introduction to Shen between the monolithic The Book of Shen and the short 15 minute introduction

1. Introduction

2. License

3. History

4. The Core Language

4.1 Base Types
4.1.1 Symbols
4.1.2 Strings
4.1.3 Numbers
4.2 Function Applications
4.3 The Top Level
4.4 Arithmetic
4.5 Comments

4.6 Sequences

4.6.1 Lists
4.6.2 Tuples
4.6.3 Vectors

4.7 lambda and let
4.8 Global Assignments
4.9 Higher Order Functions
4.10 Lazy Evaluation
4.11 I/O
4.12 Loading Files
4.13 Streams
4.14 Exceptions
4.15 Hashing
4.16 Property Lists
4.17 Eval

5 Defining Functions

5.1 Partial Functions
5.2 List Handling Functions
5.3 String Handling Functions
5.4 Tuple Handling Functions
5.5 Vector Handling Functions
5.6 Guards
5.7 Backtracking
5.8 Writing in Kλ
5.9 Macros

6. Packages

7. Shen-YACC

7.1 Recognisor Generator
7.2 Semantic Actions

8. Shen Prolog

8.1 Sample Programs

9. Types

9.1 Types and Constructors
9.2 Functions and Types
9.3 Synonyms

10 Sequent Calculus

10.1 Recursive Types

10.2 Exotic Types

10.2.1 Dependent Types
10.2.2 Negative Types
10.2.3 Subtypes
10.2.4 The Type of All Sets

11 Glossary of Functions

12 The Syntax of Shen

Built by Shen Technology (c) Mark Tarver, June 2025