Lean C

Lean C is a sugar-coated C DSL (Domain-Specific Language) designed not to replace C/C++, but to serve as a lightweight, fully transparent transpiler. It allows developers to enjoy high-level language conveniences while producing clean, native C code.

📌 Project Status

Due to personal considerations, I rarely write C code anymore and have decided not to continue development of Lean C. The project remains as a prototype and reference. If you are interested in the DSL’s syntax features, feel free to implement or extend them independently.

💡 Rationale & Philosophy

Writing standard C often forces a trade-off between safety and control. Lean C bridges this gap by introducing modern safety features without sacrificing low-level performance or predictability.

Every line of Lean C code closely resembles native C. The transpiler acts with total transparency—apart from the core guard syntaxes, all other C code is printed verbatim.

Lean C strictly adheres to three core disciplines:

• Zero Auto Malloc/Free: No implicit or hidden dynamic memory allocation. Memory is only allocated when you explicitly call malloc.
• No Black Box: The code remains fully transparent. What you see is exactly what the compiler expands into predictable C code.
• As Simple as Possible: We avoid syntax bloat. Lean C does not introduce Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) or asynchronous runtimes. Instead, it focuses exclusively on eliminating C’s biggest pain points: out-of-bounds memory access and resource leaks.

✨ Key Features

• Native Boolean Type: Seamless bool support without header management headaches.
• Safe String Type (c_string_t): Built-in bounds checking and safer string manipulations.
• Generic Array Type (c_array_t<T>): Type-safe, dynamic, or fixed-size array wrappers.
• defer Statement: Elegant, Go-like modern resource cleanup and RAII-lite patterns.
• Static Reflection: Compile-time metadata without runtime performance overhead.

🚫 Non-Goals

Lean C focuses on being a lightweight syntactic sugar coat, not a new heavyweight language. The following features are explicitly out of scope:

• A Complex Generic Template System: No heavy template metaprogramming or C++-style bloating.
• A Standard Container Library: We do not provide heavy built-in collections; we complement existing C solutions.
• A Full OOP Class System: No complex inheritance or virtual tables (v-tables).
• Garbage Collection: Zero implicit runtime overhead; resource management remains explicit and deterministic.

📄 License

Copyright (c) 2026 ByteBard. Licensed under the MIT License.