Welcome to Reia (pronounced RAY-uh), a Ruby/Python-like scripting language for
the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM).

Reia requires Erlang version R12B-3 (5.6.3) or later. The latest version of
Erlang is available here:

http://www.erlang.org/download.html

To compile Reia, type:

under the Reia source tree to build Reia.

If Reia has compiled successfully, type:

to install Reia systemwide. This will install the “reia” and “ire” scripts in
/usr/local/bin. Be sure to add this to your path (or move the scripts
elsewhere) if you’d like to be able to use Reia systemwide.

Reia provides three ways to execute programs:

• The Reia interpreter, located in bin/reia (or just “reia” if you’ve installed
  Reia systemwide). This runs Reia programs from the command line.

• The interactive Reia interpreter, located in bin/ire (or just “ire” if you’ve
  installed Reia systemwide). This provides an interactive environment (a
  read-eval-print loop) for running Reia programs, or just exploring the
  language.

• The Reia static compiler, located in bin/reiac (not installed systemwide).
  This compiles Reia to .beam files which may be used in conjunction with
  Erlang code. The static Reia compiler is intended for compiling the
  self-hosted parts of Reia and is not intended for general-purpose use.

Here’s some thoroughly interesting implementation trivia about Reia:

• Leex-based scanner
• Yecc-based grammar
• Compiler transforms Reia abstract forms to Erlang abstract forms or BEAM
  bytecode
• Partly self-hosted: Reia’s builtin types are mostly written in Reia

• Home Page: http://reia-lang.org
• Reia Wiki: http://wiki.reia-lang.org/
• Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/reia
• Author’s Blog: http://unlimitednovelty.com/
• Author’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/bascule
• IRC: irc.freenode.net #reia

Reia was created by Tony Arcieri, a programmer from Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Tony has a background in network services and distributed peer-to-peer systems.
His favorite programming languages are Ruby and Erlang.